Inquiry-based instruction has played an important role in science education, and been recognized as a critical approach to improve students' scientific learning effectiveness. However, current research revealed that it is a challenge for teacher education programs to improve pre-service science teachers' inquiry-based instructional activity design…

The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled innovations in science teaching and learning, such as blending online sessions with conventional face-to-face classes. We developed and validated the Blended Laboratory and E-learning iNstructional Design (BLEND) model for university-level remote laboratory sessions (RLS) to respond to the fluctuating…

Inquiry-based representation-focused approaches in science education have shown promising outcomes when students engage in knowledge building via an active process of constructing, coordinating, and evaluating representations. To date, much of the existing research around these approaches has taken place in pre-digital classrooms, but the…

Identifying effective instructional approaches that stimulate students' critical thinking (CT) has been the focus of a large body of empirical research. However, there is little agreement on the instructional principles and procedures that are theoretically sound and empirically valid to developing both domain-specific and domain-general CT…

In this paper, we present a mobile technology-assisted seamless learning process design where students were facilitated to develop their personalized and diversified understanding in a primary school's science topic of the life cycles of various living things. A goal-based approach to experiential learning model was adopted as the pedagogical…

This study examined some of the methodological approaches used by students to construct causal maps in order to determine which approaches help students understand the underlying causes and causal mechanisms in a complex system. This study tested the relationship between causal understanding (ratio of root causes correctly/incorrectly identified,…

Two experiments using the science topics of Magnetism and Light were conducted with younger learners (Year 5) who had no prior knowledge of the topics, and older learners (Year 6) who had studied the topics previously. Half of the learners were presented the information in auditory form only while the other half were presented the auditory…

Learning with instructional animations may overstretch limited working memory resources due to intense processing demands associated with transient information. The authors investigated whether explicit instructional advice coupled with a task-specific learner control mechanism (such as a timeline scrollbar) could facilitate the successful…

This study investigated the effects of domain-general and domain-specific scaffolds with different levels of support, continuous and faded, on learning of scientific content and problem-solving. Students' scores on a multiple-choice pretest, posttest, and four recommendation forms were analyzed. Students' content knowledge in all conditions…

This research seeks to (1) establish a feasible development and implementation model for an inquiry-based learning environment with e-mentoring using videoconference, and (2) apply the model to examine its impact on rural students' learning. To achieve these goals, we developed a model of inquiry-based learning with e-mentoring (IBLE) based on…

High school students can access original scientific research articles on the Internet, but may have trouble understanding them. To address this problem of online literacy, the authors developed a computer-based prototype for guiding students' comprehension of scientific articles. High school students were asked to read an original scientific…

Describes how science education partnerships composed of educational researchers, technologists, classroom teachers, natural scientists, and pedagogy experts can create effective instructional innovations using Internet technologies. Illustrates how the Scaffolded Knowledge Integration (SKI) framework gives partnerships a head start on effective…

Collaborating closely with a 10th-grade science teacher, we designed a Web-based learning environment (Web-LE) to improve student motivation to learn science. Factors believed to enhance intrinsic motivation (challenge, control, curiosity, and fantasy) were integrated into the instructional design of the Web-based learning tool. The Web-LE was…