This article reports the results of a randomized control trial of a semester-long intervention designed to promote ninth-grade science students' use of text-based investigation to create explanatory models of biological phenomena. The main research question was whether the student participants in the intervention outperformed the students in the…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional design approach for promoting student learning, in context-rich settings. GlobalEd 2 (GE2) is PBL intervention that combines face-to-face and online environments into a 12-week simulation of international negotiations of science advisors on global water resource issues. The GE2 environment is…

This study aimed to investigate the factors accounting for science learning self-efficacy (the specific beliefs that people have in their ability to complete tasks in science learning) from both the teacher and the student levels. We thus propose a multilevel model to delineate its relationships with teacher and student science hardiness (i.e.,…

Urban school districts face a dilemma in providing professional development support for teachers in transition to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Districts need to maximize the quality and amount of professional development within practical funding constraints. In this paper, we discuss preliminary results from a…

These appendices accompany the report "Final Report of the i3 Impact Study of Making Sense of SCIENCE, 2016-17 through 2017-18." Science education has experienced a significant transition over the last decade, catalyzed by a re-envisioning of what students should know and be able to do in science. That re-envisioning culminated in the…

Teachers make a difference for the outcome of their students in science classrooms. One focus in this context lies on teachers' professional knowledge. We describe this knowledge according to three domains, namely (1) content knowledge (CK), (2) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and (3) curricular knowledge (CuK). We hypothesise a positive…

The aim of this study was to develop and validate Science Homework Scale (SHS) which assesses middle-school (grades 6-8) students' perceptions of teachers' homework practices and homework self-regulation in science. Students' perceptions of teachers' homework practices included homework quality and feedback on homework while students' homework…

The assumption that inquiry-based instruction is more effective in influencing student science achievement than traditional didactic teaching has been the driving force of science education reform in recent decades and in many countries. However, the empirical relationship between these two kinds of science teaching and student science performance…

Students' frequent exposure to inquiry-based science teaching is presumed more effective than their exposure to traditional didactic instruction in helping improve competence in content knowledge and problem solving. Framed through theoretical perspectives of inquiry-based instruction and culturally relevant pedagogy, this study examines this…

Empirical analysis of secondary biology classrooms revealed that, on average, 68% of teaching time in Germany revolved around processing tasks. Quality of instruction can thus be assessed by analyzing the quality of tasks used in classroom discourse. This quasi-experimental study analyzed how teachers used tasks in 38 videotaped biology lessons…

This study examines the relationship between teacher knowledge and student learning for 9,556 students of 181 middle school physical science teachers. Assessment instruments based on the National Science Education Standards with 20 items in common were administered several times during the school year to both students and their teachers. For items…

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a set of research-based strategies designed to improve reading comprehension, enhance students' content area learning, facilitate access to higher-level texts, and to promote student engagement. The present study examines how fidelity of implementation of CSR is associated with reading outcomes for students…

A potential method for teaching geospatial thinking and reasoning (GTR) is through geospatially enabled learning technologies. We developed an energy resources geospatial curriculum that included learning activities with geographic information systems and virtual globes. This study investigated how 13 urban middle school teachers implemented and…

In this study, students' understanding of chemical changes was investigated in relation to four individual differences, related to logical thinking, field dependence/independence, convergence and divergence thinking. The study took place in Greece with the participation of students (n = 374) from three grades (8th, 10th and 12th grades) of…

This mixed methods study was designed to compare the effect of using an inquiry teaching methodology and a more traditional teaching methodology on the learning gains of students who were taught a five-week conceptual change unit on density. Seventh graders (N = 479) were assigned to five teachers who taught the same unit on density using either a…