This study used robot-based practices to develop an activity that incorporated the 6E model. The sixth-grade students learned interdisciplinary knowledge about how to use Arduino electronic components, microcontrollers, and hands-on tools to make a "Crab Robot." In addition, the students learned how to use Scratch programming language to…

Owing to the popularity of tablet computers and smart phones, e-books have become an important medium for both formal and informal learning. However, conventional e-books are mainly designed to provide information in the form of multimedia, implying that students spend most of their time memorizing and comprehending what they read from e-books,…

Background: As inquiry-based instruction is not universally implemented in science classrooms, it is crucial to introduce instructional strategies through the use of contextualized learning activities to allow students with different background knowledge and abilities to learn the essential competencies of scientific inquiry and promote their…

Science education aims to enhance students' scientific knowledge and inquiry ability. In recent years, due to the advancements of computer and network technology, as well as the considerations of safety and cost, virtual reality (VR) has been gradually applied in scientific inquiry activities. When implementing inquiry-based learning in the past,…

Facilitating students' deep-strategy behaviors and positive learning performances of science inquiry is an important and challenging educational issue. In this study, a contextual science inquiry approach is proposed for developing a 3D experiential game to cope with this problem. To evaluate the impacts of the game on students' science learning…

Background and purpose: As clear mechanisms for motivating and engaging teachers in learning and working collaboratively with colleagues are scarce, this study explored supportive conditions of promoting teacher professional development on inquiry-based science teaching in a Professional Learning Community (PLC) and examined how teachers'…

Background: The recommendation from national documents and reports to promote inquiry-related science activities has not been supported by recent studies, which have found the overall frequency of inquiry activities to be negatively associated with student learning outcomes. This study was inspired by such conflicting reports and aimed to clarify…

Scholars and researchers generally believe that scientific inquiry is an important activity for cultivating students' applied knowledge and high-level thinking ability. The process of scientific inquiry can promote students' learning motivation and trigger their higher-order thinking ability. However, students may not have enough prior knowledge…

The purpose of this study was to analyze visual attention during students' learning of Toulmin's argument pattern (TAP) and the effects of epistemic beliefs in science on the understanding of argument components. A total of 43 undergraduates were recruited through the Internet. Online questionnaires targeting beliefs about knowledge in science…

This study examined the impact of a project-based learning module on young children's scientific practices in urban and Indigenous areas. The module was developed by drawing upon early science standards and research on scientific practices and project-based teaching approaches. Ninety-eight children from northern Taiwan participated. Their average…

This study examined the roles of gender and STEM major status as predictors of performance in formulating a research question and designing experiment among 70 undergraduate Taiwanese college students participating in inquiry-based learning (IBL). Student participants in this study were involved in discrepant demonstrations of scientific events…

Students' engagement in a learning environment has been a crucial factor in evaluating the quality of learning and predicting their academic success. With technologies being more applied in science education for enhancing learning engagement, it is important to study how learning environments with different levels of technological engagement…

In the field of science education, laboratory learning environment has gained renewed interest in the recent decade. This study aimed to investigate the relationships among students' conceptions of science laboratory learning, perceptions of the science laboratory learning environment, and their academic self-efficacy in science learning by…

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of metacognitive scaffolding in different inquiry tasks related to optics. Two high school classes participated in this study. One class, the treatment group (n = 33), which integrated metacognitive prompts into the simulation-based inquiry, was compared to the other class, the control group (n = 34),…

The two-year study aimed to explore how students' development of different inquiry abilities actually benefited from the design of technology-infused learning modules. Three learning modules on the topics of seasons, environmental issues and air pollution were developed to facilitate students' inquiry abilities: questioning, planning, analyzing,…