Design activities are gaining interest as rich contexts for learning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. STEM teachers may find this challenging however, as designing requires support that they are not used to providing. In a subject like chemistry, teachers would have to balance creativity and responsibility for the…

Autonomy-supportive activities are understood to promote students' autonomous forms of learning motivation, educational outcomes and well-being. In the current study, two learning labs in one Dutch secondary school have been studied. In these learning labs--each lasting one entire school year--students' autonomy during their learning process have…

Research and design activities are important focus points in international policies for secondary Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. It is up to school teachers to implement and supervise these activities in the STEM classroom. However, not much is known about the attitudes teachers hold towards supervising research…

Over the last decades, many European Union countries have invested in strengthening participatory learning in citizenship education policy and practice. This survey study provides insight into how high school teachers in the Netherlands advance critical democratic citizenship and a democratic school culture in the context of mock elections. A…

The present study investigated outreach activities, developed by STEM-based companies or universities in co-creation with secondary education with the aim to inform students about and motivate them for a career in STEM by connecting the work-context with school-science. Although many of such activities are being offered, little is known about…

The aim of this explorative study was to develop and test a pedagogy aimed at promoting students' ability to perform historical contextualization. Teaching historical contextualization was conceptualized in terms of four pedagogical design principles: (1) making students aware of the consequences of a present-oriented perspective when examining…

Searching for new methods to start a genuine dialogue in secondary school classrooms, bibliodrama as an active form of putting religious stories in action was used. The research focused on examining relationships between student learning activities and teacher behavior; six lessons were analyzed in a qualitative cross-case analysis. A dialogue in…

The present experimental study examined whether a different focus during a pre-task planning observation task affects learners' subsequent oral task performance. Forty-eight ninth-grade students learning German as a foreign language were randomly assigned to two different planning conditions: video observations with a focus on language (FonL) and…

Meaning-making and sense-making are generally assumed to be part of students' personal vocational knowledge development, since they contribute to both students' socialisation in a vocation and students' personalisation of concepts, values and beliefs regarding that vocation. However, how students in vocational education acquire meaning and make…

Teacher learning is essential to the teaching profession, because it has been strongly linked to improved teaching practices and teacher quality. The source for teacher learning is initial teacher education, a crucial phase in the learning-to-teach continuum. To gain insight into this influential period for student teachers' long-term professional…

Serious games foster the acquisition of complex problem-solving skills. Assessment of such skills should be in line with instruction, and within a serious game environment its content validity should equal face-to-face assessment. Research on assessment in serious gaming has remained rather scarce. This article shows how assessment can be…

It is commonly understood that teachers in secondary school should develop throughout their career in order to stay as an essential factor in student learning. Schools can offer opportunities to link teachers' professional learning to their school practice with a positive impact on teachers' motivation to learn and the effectiveness of their…

Election simulations are considered a viable tool to instigate democratic learning in schools. This paper reports an explorative qualitative inquiry into one type of simulation project: mock-elections (ME). Main objective was to gain an insight into the organization of ME-practices in eight schools in the Netherlands in 2012. Thematic analysis of…

Information communication and technology (ICT) has been used in various fields. The use of teleconference for teaching and learning activities is currently not a new topic in global world. In Indonesia, through IMHERE Program from Directorate of Higher Education, some universities have been connected with a network of teleconference as a medium of…

In 21st century education students should have ample opportunities to collaborate on authentic problems. Many teachers however find it difficult to make the transfer from teacher to student-centered education. Giving students autonomy can be disquieting to teachers, as they fear to lose control of student learning. Teachers in a teacher…