Although most teachers recognize the importance of taking investigative, open-ended approaches to students' learning experiences, implementing them in high school classes can be challenging for teachers. In this work, we analyzed data from multiple sources from a teaching Community of Practice (CoP) to investigate (a) barriers to taking an…

Understanding human behavior and reasoning is essential for developing successful instruction. Discipline-based education researchers have examined how students learn, informing the development of successful instructional strategies. Researchers have also identified barriers to the successful implementation of such strategies. This work utilizes…

This study contributes to the literature on the role of communities of learners in the professional development of physics teachers. It offers insights from the "Collabora--A Community of Learners on Laboratory Work" program, designed to enhance the use of laboratories in secondary school physics teaching. The program's foundation rested…

Take a selection of balls and marbles along to a nearby playground slide and let students investigate factors that may influence how balls accelerate down an inclined plane. Students can make hypotheses in small groups, plan investigations to test multiple possible explanations and draw conclusions about the importance of different variables. The…

It has been well-establishing in the field of educational research that traditional educational methods such as passive lectures and labs where students follow pre-designed procedures to verify information already told to them are not effective for promoting meaningful and lasting conceptual understanding. Alongside this knowledge have come a…

Effective faculty professional development must be participant centered; tailored to the needs and interests of the faculty who engage in it. In order to better understand those needs and interests, we investigate how knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and teaching practice vary among new physics faculty, using surveys of a large sample (n = 442) of…

This study investigated science classroom discourse in terms of the types of teacher discursive moves (TDMs) and the relationships between the types of TDMs and student-led cognitive contributions in different science concepts by considering the classroom context. An experienced seventh-grade science teacher and her 19 students were engaged in…

In this study, we evaluate the impact of rehearsing teaching skills in a mixed-reality classroom simulator on graduate teaching assistants' (GTAs) instructional practices as well as undergraduate student learning outcomes. The simulator training is intended to provide GTAs opportunities to deliberately practice essential pedagogical skills that…

We investigated how Chinese physics teachers structured classroom discourse to support the cognitive and social aspects of inquiry-based science learning. Regarding the cognitive aspect, we examined to what extent the cognitive processes underlying the scientific skills and the disciplinary reasoning behind the content knowledge were taught.…

Decreasing motivation in science classes is often reported in many countries. Georgia, one of the post Soviet countries, has overcome the highly centralised educational system and nowadays implements a new national educational reform. National reforms demand more student-active and inquiry-based learning. Many Georgian teachers aren't ready for…

This article describes the specific methods of a regional partnership that has lasted more than twenty-five years. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville has partnered with public and private schools in the southwestern portion of Illinois, and in metro St. Louis, in the Hands-On Science project, which provides instruction development for…

These proceedings contain the papers of the International Conference e-Learning 2016, which was organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society, 1-3 July, 2016. This conference is part of the Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems 2016, 1-4 July. The e-Learning (EL) 2016 conference aims…

Much research has focused on student views about physics concepts, with an emphasis on the identification of alternative conceptions, and how curricula and professional development may ameliorate the situation. However, there has been little work on determining the extent of, and in separating, the student and teacher/classroom level variables…