Physical educators face many daily challenges in their work. Delivering culturally responsive programming that speaks to all students regardless of race, religion, nationality, gender, and motor abilities (Kozub & Hodge, 2014) is one of these challenges. Teachers who build a meaningful physical educational environment with skilled activities…

Discovery sessions are usually based around a stimulus that the teacher has set up. When children are all doing something similar, watching what happens, talking about the science that is going on, the teacher has a way in to learn about their understanding, but then the teacher can take it deeper into exploring their skills in working…

Some see research as an esoteric, other-worldly, practice only to be completed by those unable to do anything 'real'. Others--including some academics working in universities--see it as 'just another thing to do', a burden on already overworked staff, used as an excuse to set even more performance goals. Within initial teacher education, the…

Students are naturally curious and inquisitive with powerful intrinsic motives to probe, learn, and understand their world. Accordingly, class activities must capitalize on this inherently energetic and curious nature so that learning becomes a lifelong activity where students take initiative for learning, are skilled in learning, and want to…

In a typical chemistry instrumentation laboratory, students learn analytical techniques through a well-developed procedure. Such an approach, however, does not engage students in a creative endeavor. To foster the intrinsic motivation of students' desire to learn, improve their confidence in self-directed learning activities and enhance their…

A concrete-semiconcrete-abstract (CSA) instructional approach derived from discovery learning (DIS) was embedded in a direct instruction (DI) methodology to teach eight elementary students with math disabilities. One-minute abstract-level probes were the primary metric used to assess student performance on subtraction problems (minuends 0-9). A…

Test-based assessment tools are mostly focused on the use of computers. However, advanced Information and Communication Technologies, such as handheld devices, opens up the possibilities of creating new assessment scenarios, increasing the teachers' choices to design more appropriate tests for their subject areas. In this paper we use the term…

Many of our greatest joys in life are related to our learning, but, unfortunately, most of that learning takes place outside of school. Educators can put more joy into the experience of going to school and get more joy out of working inside school by focusing on several essentials. Help students find pleasure in learning by giving them the freedom…

In this experiment, organic chemistry students perform reactions between three naphthyl acetate derivatives and the diazonium salt Fast-Red TR, under basic conditions. The three naphthyl acetate derivatives used in this study are 2-naphthyl acetate (1a), 6-bromo-2-naphthyl acetate (1b) and 1,6-dibromo-2-naphthyl acetate (1c). The two-step, one-pot…

K-12 students enter physical education with many naive conceptions or misconceptions of how motor skills are acquired. One goal of physical education is to teach concepts that will help students learn and perform motor skills, but many practitioners don't know how to provide experiences that will teach students to apply their knowledge…

Uses two assessment methods to measure student competence in conducting scientific inquiry. Investigates 32 high school students for a relationship between scientific inquiry capability and success in making discoveries. Defines scientific inquiry, scientific discovery, and the relationship between these two concepts. (Contains 70 references.)…

Portfolios give teachers insights into their students' growth not possible through traditional assessment measures. The portfolio concept is feasible if students become immersed in reading, writing, speaking, and listening and are given sufficient time, project choices, and positive reinforcement. Educators should nurture self-evaluation of…

College-level student inquiry projects are not easy to evaluate within the parameters of the academic grading system. One form of rubric-guided assessment has specific advantages in addressing both performance and product by allowing weighting of criteria, flexibility of criteria and standards based on the project, defining the major aspects of…

Examines relations between the features of discovery simulations, the learning processes elicited, the knowledge that results, and the methods used to measure the acquired knowledge. Discusses intuitive knowledge and describes a study of post-secondary students that investigated the instructional effectiveness of discovery simulations in physics.…

Describes a study that compares the performance of introductory physics students on two examination problems. One problem is qualitative and similar to those used in an inquiry approach. The second problem is a typical quantitative problem. Those students enrolled in the inquiry-based introductory course performed significantly better than those…