The comprehensive practical activity curriculum can be said to be created to cater to children's curiosity and nature of exploration. Through the creation of problem situations, children are guided not only to explore what the world is, but also to pay close attention to what the world will be and cultivate children's key competencies in the real…

House of Imagination works with educators, artists and creative professionals to develop a creative approach to learning and researching experimental sites for pedagogical innovation. In our partnership work, our creative methodology, with everyone an artist, drives the ambition for artistic excellence. House of Imagination's signature project…

Chemistry curricula in part rely on the use of laboratory demonstrations and experiments. The complex nature of this kind of educational activity has been posing challenges from the very early days of teaching chemistry. As chemistry is an experimental science, one possible approach to make the teaching of this subject more efficient is to use…

Educators face a major challenge protecting and nurturing students' passion for journalism while scrambling to help them keep up with a work environment in constant flux. They cannot afford to sidetrack this passion while teaching new software, evolving technology, and marketplace needs. If universities want to produce the best and brightest…

Although some may think of game-based teaching as a 'tactical' teaching style instructionally distinctive by an emphasis on guided discovery, this article shows that it is more accurate to think of it as a range of teaching styles or a 'toolkit' of styles. Mosston and Ashworth's spectrum of teaching styles is used to analyze examples of learning…

Through a collaboration between a professor in academia and an industry professional, entry-level food science students were given the opportunity to critically evaluate the safety of energy drinks. This evaluation occurred through a General Education (Category A3) course designated "Critical Thinking" at California State University --…

An undergraduate experiment for the organic laboratory is described that utilizes microwave heating to prepare 5- substituted 1H-tetrazole derivatives through a (3 + 2) cycloaddition between aryl nitriles and sodium azide. The reaction mixture is analyzed by thin layer chromatography. The products are purified through an acid-base extraction and…

Almost all commercial quadrupole ICP-MS instruments use collision/reaction cells to either attenuate spectral interferences or shift the analyte of interest to an interference-free "m/z" (e.g., by O addition). A laboratory practical was developed to introduce the students to the basic operating principles of ICP-MS using a hands-on…

Teacher practices created experiences for students to guide their inquiry by creating opportunities to gather data through field notes. Students examined their county and gathered data from the field on a daylong investigation of their county. Students generated questions and considered their observations at multiple stops. Students learned to…

A Gateway Education Programme is established in Hong Kong that aims to broaden students' interdisciplinary knowledge and nurture student innovations under the Discovery-enriched Curriculum. To support the initiative, a novel idea was proposed for the creation of a Gateway Education Laboratory (GE Lab) with a highly configurable layout equipped…

In this laboratory experiment, upper-division undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry majors investigate amide-bond-forming reactions from a green chemistry perspective. Using hydrocinnamic acid and benzylamine as reactants, students perform three types of amide-forming reactions: an acid chloride derivative route; a coupling reagent promoted…

A novel smartphone microscope can be used to observe the dissolution and crystallization of sodium chloride at a microscopic level. Observation of these seemingly simple phenomena through the microscope at 100× magnification can actually reveal some surprising behavior. These experiments offer the opportunity to discuss some basic concepts such as…

This article introduces the inquiry model adopted for Bermuda government preschools and early primary schools, which, because of its emancipatory critical pedagogy, uses abductive reasoning. This model is particularly well suited to government schools, given Bermuda's historical inequities and cultural differences. Abductive reasoning allows for…

Every object we think of or encounter, whether a natural or human-made, has a regular or irregular shape. In its own intrinsic conceptual design, it has elements of mathematics, science, engineering, and arts, etc., which are part of the object's geometric shape, form and structure. Geometry is not only an important part of mathematics, but it is…

This paper explores the potential for students to engage in social constructivist (Vygotsky, 1978) learning through the development of a course wiki. As a requirement of the Principles of Learning (PoL) course, at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, students are tasked with building a collection of online, student-authored learning…