Science is a collaborative process and electronic means of communication enhance collaborative possibilities. It is an important ability to be able to effectively work with people from different cultures. Our program uses physics activities to bring secondary school girls from different cultures together. Students from a school in the United…

In order to maintain the United States' global competitiveness and create new and innovative solutions to solve global challenges, more and diverse numbers of STEM graduates need to be attracted and retained in technical disciplines (Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology,…

Practical independent research projects (IRPs) are a feature of school science in a number of countries. To assess the impact of IRPs on students, a systematic review of the literature was undertaken. Thirty-nine papers met the review inclusion criteria, reporting on work from twelve countries. The review indicates that IRPs are often associated…

This paper presents protests from academically successful students who privately conveyed to the researchers their feelings of personal discontent with schools. The criterion to select this "sample" was that these students, dissatisfied with school but having good marks, would reveal what others, academically less successful, could not…

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the introduction, implementation, evolution, hybridization, and initial research into the constructivist instructional models deployed within a secondary (high) school in Australia. A concomitant aim is to relate some of the consequences of whole school pedagogical change, which have included the…

The study described in this report included 128 high school economics teachers from 106 schools in Arizona and California, half of whom were randomly assigned to the "Problem Based Economics Instruction" condition and half of whom were randomly assigned to the comparison condition. High levels of teacher attrition occurred after…

Successful strategies for incorporating engineering design challenges into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses in American high schools are presented in this paper. The developers have taken the position that engineering design experiences should be an important component of the high school education of all American…

On the 2009 AP[c] Statistics Exam, students were asked to create a statistic to measure skewness in a distribution. This paper explores several of the most popular student responses and evaluates which statistic performs best when sampling from various skewed populations. (Contains 8 figures, 3 tables, and 4 footnotes.)

Molecular biology is a difficult comprehension subject due to its high complexity, thus requiring new teaching approaches. Herein, we developed an interdisciplinary board game involving the human immune system response against a bacterial infection for teaching molecular biology at high school. Initially, we created a database with several…

In this study, the effects of teacher-directed and self-directed problem-solving strategies on students' attitudes toward physics were explored. Problem-solving strategies were used with the experimental group, while the control group was instructed using traditional teaching methods. The study was conducted with 270 students at various high…

With funding from NSF, the Prime the Pipeline Project (P[cube]) is responding to the need to strengthen the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline from high school to college by developing and evaluating the scientific village strategy and the culture it creates. The scientific village, a community of high school…

Interviews with students at an all-Black, all-male school in a major northeastern city revealed that a significant proportion of the participating students had a strong preference for practical, demonstrative explanations of new concepts and information that are directly related to their everyday experiential realities. These findings suggest that…

The authors examined the potential differences between problem-based learning (PBL) and traditional instructional approaches in building knowledge of macroeconomic concepts and principles in high school students. Using data from 252 economics students at 11 high schools and controlling for individual characteristics, most notably verbal ability,…

This paper explores whether a scaffolded, multimedia learning environment might mitigate obstacles that dissuade teachers from implementing problem-based practices. We present a longitudinal analysis of one expository-oriented teacher's experience with such an environment and examine underlying belief, knowledge, and dispositional factors that may…

This study examines students' and parents' choices in one district that recently began offering a new problem-centered high school mathematics program aligned with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards, in addition to its traditional mathematics sequence. Despite the district's previous implementation of Standards-based…