Teachers often struggle to implement inquiry-based science teaching. To support them, IndagApp--a 3D educational app that offers curriculum-aligned, inquiry-based lesson plans--was designed. The app is rooted in the inquiry phases recommended in best-practices literature, which arguably align with most international standards. This study describes…

Guided and open inquiry strategies are found to improve students' attitudes toward science. Yet, confirmation and structured inquiry are more often enacted by teachers. The effectiveness of these approaches involving high teacher guidance remains unexplored. Students in six classes (N = 119, M[subscript age] = 11.25 years) were assigned to control…

Among dozens of factors that influence mathematics teaching in the elementary classroom, textbooks endure as a significant contributor to the conversation. While teachers have many considerations while lesson planning, the textbook often forms an important launch point in determining what to include in lessons and how to do so. It follows that…

This paper examines the implementation of an instructional module on preservice elementary teachers' professional noticing of children's mathematical thinking. The module focuses on professional noticing skills through the content focus of early algebraic reasoning and uses complex video vignettes from whole class instruction in authentic…

This study examines what students enrolled in the honors and general sections of a high school biology course offered at the same school learn when they have an opportunity to participate in a broad or narrow range of science practices during their laboratory experiences. The results of our analysis suggest that the students enrolled in the…

Science teacher educators use examples of practice to support teacher candidates (TCs) learning to engage in new forms of science teaching. However, interpretation of these examples assumes a level of expertise about practice TCs lack. This article describes a study designed to determine some of the differences between expert teachers' and TCs'…

The study was situated in a National Science Foundation supported Math Science Partnership between a private university and an urban school district. This study sought to understand the decision-making process of elementary teachers as they implement an integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum in their…

A sample of third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade student responses to the question "What is a fraction?" were examined to gain an understanding of how children in upper elementary grades make sense of fractions. Rather than measure children's understanding of fractions relative to mathematically conventional part-whole constructions of…

Research has indicated that experts' subject matter knowledge structures (SMKSs) differ from those of novices in that they contain more cross-linking, interconnections, and overarching thematic elements, characteristics that are in accordance with those espoused in current reform documents. Unfortunately, teachers' SMKSs are not…

A nonequivalent, control group design was used to investigate student achievement in secondary chemistry. This study investigated the effect of process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) in high school chemistry to reduce alternate conceptions related to the particulate nature of matter versus traditional lecture pedagogy. Data were…

In this study, we examined 10 expert and 10 novice teachers' noticing of classroom events in China. It was found that both expert and novice teachers, who were selected from two cities in China, highly attended to developing students' mathematics knowledge coherently and developing students' mathematical thinking and ability; they also paid…

This quasi-experimental study investigated how explicit instruction about multiple modes of representation (MMR) impacted grades 7 (n = 61) and 8 (n = 141) students' learning and multimodal use on end-of-unit assessments. Half of each teacher's (n = 3) students received an intervention consisting of explicit instruction on MMR in science…

The purpose of this study was to compare changes in beliefs of two groups of preservice teachers involved in two types of opportunities to immediately apply methods for teaching accompanying an elementary mathematics methods course. Students in one group applied the methods learned in class through weekly 30-minute peer-teaching sessions, while…

The primary purpose of this classroom experiment was to examine the effectiveness of concrete (hands-on) manipulatives as compared with virtual (computer-based) manipulatives on student review of fraction concepts in third grade and introduction of symmetry concepts in fourth grade. A pretest-posttest design was employed with a sample of 91…

While participating in single- and mixed-gender science and mathematics classes, ninth-grade urban high school students' (n = 118) academic self-concept, self-efficacy, and school climate perceptions were examined. Their perceptions were measured quantitatively from the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics (modified for Science) Attitude and the Patterns…