How might teacher educators build a reflective and supportive community of practice with pre-service teachers? How might a visual (intermedia) journaling practice support critical and reflective thinking? How might an arts-based intermedia approach to analysis inform teacher educator pedagogical methods? These questions evolved and emerged…

This study provides a qualitative approach to the issue of student engagement with a particular focus on urban area young learners in 4th grade science classes. Each class consisted of approximately 25 students. The students were given Interactive Notebooks to see whether this intervention helped promote greater engagement with the science…

Learning progressions are the latest tool to understand the ways science learning occurs and they underlie the structure and framework of the "Next Generation Science Standards". Prior research indicated a variety of ways to develop and validate learning progressions and learning progression's general positive impact on students' science…

The purpose of this exploratory mixed-methods action research study was to expose six students studying Oral Communications 1 (OC1) at Japan's Technical University (JTU) to a sociocultural component using the textbook "Mirrors and Windows" (Huber-Kriegler, Lazar, & Strange, 2003) over an eight-week period with the assistance of…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the use of 3-D printed models as an instructional tool in a middle school science classroom for students with visual impairments and compare their use to traditional tactile graphics for aiding conceptual understanding of geoscience concepts. Specifically, this study examined if the students'…

In secondary science, the 2011 Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) was designed to represent a teacher candidate's ability to both apply their understanding of their science content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, and to allow the candidates to reflect on student learning. Specifically, Task 2 of the TPA requires teacher…

This case study explored the use of students' personal mobile devices in the classroom for learning. The context was a district with an initiative called Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT), whereby students regularly utilized their personal technology as part of the curriculum. The focus of this study was to better understand how students' personal…

Current educational initiatives encourage the use of authentic learning environments to realistically prepare students for jobs in a constantly changing world. Many students of the Millennial generation may be social media savvy. However, what can be said about learning conditions and student readiness for active, reflective and collaborative…