Boasting a wide range of interactive and engaging features, narrative-based learning has become increasingly popular in educational settings. Narrative-based instructional approaches engage students in a novel set of engaging experiences for educational purposes. Although it is not a new concept, the implications of narrative-based learning for…

Science teachers have been urged to use emerging technologies, such as robots, in ways that empower K-12 students as active participants responsible for their learning and knowledge development within the scientific domain. And yet, little is known about whether the use of robots effectively supports students' epistemic agency in science learning.…

In the digital age in which we live, one of the primary goals of education is to nurture individuals who are capable of thinking creatively, solving problems, and being innovative and productive. Computational thinking is an analytical process that requires defining problems and at the same time solving these problems by proceeding in creative…

Science and computational practices such as modeling and abstraction are critical to understanding the complex systems that are integral to climate science. Given the demonstrated affordances of game design in supporting such practices, we implemented a free 4-day intensive workshop for middle school girls that focused on using the visual…

Although virtual field trips are becoming popular, there are few empirical studies of their impacts on student outcomes. This study reports on a meta-analytic evaluation of the impact of a virtual field trip on student perceptions of scientists. Specifically, the study examined the summary effect of zipTrips broadcasts on evaluation…

Several studies found that direct instruction and task structuring can effectively promote children's ability to design unconfounded experiments. The present study examined whether the impact of these interventions extends to other scientific reasoning skills by comparing the inquiry activities of 55 fifth-graders randomly assigned to one of…

The need to reform science teacher preparation programs has been pointed out in research (Bryan and Abell in "J Res Sci Teach" 36:121-140, 1999; Bryan and Atwater in "Sci Educ" 8(6):821-839, 2002; Harrington and Hathaway in "J Teach Educ" 46(4):275-284, 1995). Science teachers are charged with the responsibility of…

In this study, a follow-up analysis of the data reported in Lin et al. ("Learn Media Technol." doi: 10.1080/17439884.2011.629660 , 2011), we investigated the relationship between student use of a virtual field trip (VFT) system and the probability of students reporting wanting to visit the national park site upon which the VFT was modeled,…

This article re-examines the learning environment in an after-school science program for socio-economically disadvantaged children, attempting to discover why the particular group we studied failed to make significant progress between pre and post program testing, while other groups undergoing the same program elsewhere succeeded. Data composed of…

The Image Processing for Teaching project provides a powerful medium to excite students about science and mathematics, especially children from minority groups and others whose needs have not been met by traditional teaching. Using professional-quality software on microcomputers, students explore a variety of scientific data sets, including…

The United States is experiencing an obesity epidemic: A science-technology-society public health issue tied to our built environment, which is characterized by heavy dependence on automobiles and reduced opportunities to walk and bicycle for transportation. This presents an informal science education opportunity within "science in personal…