In this study, students enrolled in a basic physics class participated in one of the online citizen science projects available on the Zooniverse website (www.zooniverse.org) as a homework assignment. They then wrote a 300-500-word reflection about their experience addressing several questions given as prompts. The analysis of the responses showed…

A way to promote student interest and engagement in physics is by capitalizing on students' skills in arts and crafts to design and make physics-based toys. This article illustrates how two students (averaging 14 years of age) in the authors' science class designed and fabricated a variation of a physics-based teaching aid that demonstrates the…

Hands-on projects have been widely used as alternative approaches for teaching and learning of science with direct practical experience on doing to promote students' development of 21st-century skills. Here, we present an implementation of hands-on projects into teaching and learning of magnetic field topic that corresponds with indicators and…

The High School Project on Astrophysics Research with Cosmics (HiSPARC) is an international project in which secondary schools and academic institutions join forces to form a network of detectors to measure cosmic rays with extremely high energy. We present results of research done by students at the King Edward VI High School For Girls,…

Describes a project on the application of the laser which aims to stimulate the interest of undergraduate students in applied physics and to demonstrate the interaction between light and ultrasonic waves by building a simple laser communication system. (SK)

This study was an ethnography of high school students working as apprentices in university solid state physics labs, as part of a summer science program. It was designed to explore the learning potential for high school students in such an environment. It examined the social interactions between scientists and students and how these…

Examines the effect of solar radiation on colored shingles. Describes the experimental procedure, results, and discussion. Presents a picture of the experimental arrangement and three graphs of data measured at different dates. (YP)

Contemporary instructional approaches expect students to be active producers of knowledge. This leads to the need for creation of instructional tools and tasks that can offer students opportunities for active learning. This study examines the effect of a computational experiment as an instructional tool-for Grade 12 students, using a computer…

The research dimension of higher education programmes is usually discussed in association with doctoral studies. Against a background of scarce literature investigating research in a Master's degree, this article aims to analyse the place of research in Master's qualifications, first, as envisaged by official European and national documents acting…

The use of handheld computers in educational contexts has increased considerably in recent years and their value as a teaching tool has been confirmed by many positive experiences, particular within collaborative learning systems (Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning [MCSCL]). The cost of the devices has hindered widespread use in…

Extends the modeling system presented in Part I. This model is applied to two widely diverse educational processes: "Student Actions" and "Do Homework Problem." Its computational syntax imposes completeness criteria on the modeling and its uniformity. (AIM)

Presents a system for formally characterizing elements of an introductory science class, measuring class performance based on this characterization, and modeling the value of the class based on the measurements. The main components of this modeling system include educational engineering with a formal set of practices, the use of computational…

Described is a Dutch thematics physics curriculum recently developed for the average academic secondary student. Discussed are the structure, contents of units, and systematic units of the curriculum. (CW)

This study investigated whether the interaction of teacher, student, and classroom characteristics has a significant effect on classroom climate. Linear regression techniques were used to predict selected scales of "Anderson's Learning Environment Inventory" (LEI) from sets of orthogonal variables which are representative characteristics…

In evaluating whether the laboratory guides for Project Physics and for PSSC are consistent with the goals of their designers in demonstrating the interplay between experiment and theory in the development of physics, a system was developed for analyzing physics laboratory investigations, and the laboratory activities in the "PSSC Physics…