Design-based learning (DBL) offers opportunities to support students' content understanding. Previous DBL studies reported different effect sizes by using the data from one participant group. The goal of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis that would give a comprehensive picture of how DBL is connected to student achievement in different…

Game-based learning (GBL) may address the unique characteristics of a single subject such as chemistry. Previous systematic reviews on the effects of GBL have yielded contradictory results concerning cognitive and motivational outcomes. This meta-analysis aims to: (a) estimate the overall effect size of GBL in chemistry education on cognitive,…

It is a widely held view that students' epistemic beliefs influence the way they think and learn in a given context, however, in the science learning context, the relationship between sophisticated epistemic beliefs and success in scientific practice is sometimes ambiguous. Taking this inconsistency as a point of departure, we examined the…

This study investigates the relationships between professional knowledge, self-concept, and interest of pre-service physics teachers. In order to support student learning and interest development alike, teachers need a profound professional knowledge and respective motivational orientations. Developing both professional knowledge and motivational…

A large body of research has examined students' conceptions of evolution and their relationships to acceptance of evolution. Proficiency in statistical and probabilistic reasoning has long been considered to be an essential feature of evolutionary reasoning, yet almost no empirical work has explored these putative connections. The RaPro…

This study examines the impact of a new master's degree program on the instructional practices of K-8 in-service teachers. This 2.5-year master's program was designed to deepen in-service teachers' knowledge in science and mathematics and promote greater use of reform-oriented instruction. Teachers' instructional practices were…

Despite concerted efforts by science educators to understand patterns of evolutionary reasoning in science students and teachers, the vast majority of evolution education studies have failed to carefully consider or control for item feature effects in knowledge measurement. Our study explores whether robust contextualization patterns emerge within…

Achievement goal theory distinguishes between mastery goals (the goals of developing competence) and performance goals (the goals of demonstrating competence) [Ames [1992] "Journal of Educational Psychology" 84: 261-271]. In this study, we employed this theory aiming to better understand why adolescents' motivation to learn science…

Growing recognition of the central importance of fostering an in-depth understanding of natural selection has, surprisingly, failed to stimulate work on the development and rigorous evaluation of instruments that measure knowledge of it. We used three different methodological tools, the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection (CINS), a modified…

This study compared the relationships of self-efficacy and reasoning ability to achievement in introductory college biology. Based on the hypothesis that developing formal and postformal reasoning ability is a primary factor influencing self-efficacy, a significant positive correlation was predicted between reasoning ability and degree of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences among schools using student responses in the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study-1999 (TIMSS-99) data. Schools were classified into two groups based on eighth grade students' overall achievement in science. Two different discriminant function analyses were performed to distinguish…

The present study makes use of the capabilities of computerized environments to enable simultaneous display of molecular representations that correspond to observations at the macroscopic level. This study questions the immediate and long-term effects of using a multimedia instructional unit that integrates the macroscopic, symbolic, and molecular…