In today's dynamic global economy, integrated units of study are particularly important. Students who are fluent in several disciplines and comfortable moving among them can make meaningful connections and maintain enhanced understandings (Sias et al. 2016). This article shares an integrated STEAM unit that is grounded in the science disciplinary…

In this report of an action research study, the authors describe how one elementary science teacher educator used transcript coding of simulated classroom discussions as a pedagogical approach to learn about her elementary preservice teachers' (PSTs') abilities to notice key aspects of scientific argumentation discussions. Elementary PSTs (n = 19)…

Due to benefits for teaching and learning, an increasing number of studies have focused on classroom dialogue and how to make it productive. Coding, in which the transcribed conversation is allocated to a set of features, is commonly employed to deal with the textual data arising from this dialogue. This is generally done manually and cannot…

Teaching programming and coding skills in K-12 classrooms is becoming a part of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs across the United States. Often, these opportunities are available through extra-curricular activities such as Robotics club, math club, STEM club, etc. Increasing STEM opportunities for students who are…

Students in Mrs. Wilson's fourth-grade classroom watch in anticipation as the guest teacher, Ms. Davis, demonstrates binary signaling using a lightbulb that flashes when she holds it in her hands. She challenges them to guess what she is trying to "say" while making the lightbulb flash on and off, explaining that the lightbulb stands for…

This article presents a study of how groups of young students discuss illustrations of human blood circulation. Transparency is not an innate quality of illustrations, visual information is always coded and interpretations are always related to culture and context. Results of this study are discussed with reference to Kress and van Leeuwens'…

We investigated what a cognitive framework for measuring classroom teaching could reveal about (a) the impact of a professional development (PD) program on teaching practices and (b) the relationship between teaching practices and student science learning. To conduct this study, we leveraged a collaboration between two entirely independent…

As collaborative learning is actualized through evolving dialogues, temporality inevitably matters for the analysis of collaborative learning. This study attempts to uncover sequential patterns that distinguish "productive" threads of knowledge-building discourse. A database of Grade 1-6 knowledge-building discourse was first coded for…

The concept of energy serves biologists as a powerful analytical model to describe phenomena that occurs in the natural world. Due to the concept's relevance, educational standards of different countries identify energy as a core idea for the teaching and learning of biology and other science subjects. However, previous research on students'…

Researchers have recognized the potential of educational computer games in improving students' learning engagement and outcomes; however, facilitating effective learning behaviors during the gaming process remains an important and challenging issue. In this paper, a collaborative knowledge construction strategy was incorporated into an educational…

This cross-sectional study explored students' conceptions of science learning via drawing analysis. A total of 906 Taiwanese students in 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade were asked to use drawing to illustrate how they conceptualise science learning. Students' drawings were analysed using a coding checklist to determine the presence or absence…

This study of three science teachers' lessons on heat and temperature seeks to characterise classroom talk that highlighted the ways language is used and to examine the nature of the language demands revealed in constructing, negotiating, arguing and communicating science ideas. The transcripts from the entire instructional units for these…

Teachers can reflect on and analyze their classroom discourse to inform their instructional practice. When teachers try to do so however, they often face analytic difficulties, which include the data set (e.g., data input, data transformation, and utterances by unknown speakers), coding (e.g., coding complexity, reliability, and efficiency),…

Children have served as research subjects in several surveys on attitudes to insects and invertebrates. Most of the studies have used quantitative scoring methods to draw conclusions. This paper takes a different approach as it analyzes children's free-text comments to gain an understanding of their viewpoints. A total of 246 children aged 9-13…

Although games--including board games, video games, and Massive Multiplayer Online Games--have garnered significant attention in recent years for their impact on educational outcomes, a primary focus of this interest is the transfer of knowledge from game to nongame settings. Building on this literature, our research explores how game designs that…