This study aims to explore the literature on learning interventions that can enhance students' multiple representation skills and identify indicators for assessing multiple representation abilities in physics education. Following the PRISMA procedure, the research is a systematic literature review using qualitative content analysis techniques. The…

How do scientists make inferences for something they cannot directly observe? The Black Box approach seems ideal to help students understand how scientists work. Black Boxes are sealed units; their interior is not accessible. The effort to determine their possible content (internal structure) demands successive modifications in hypothesis,…

Introducing research in undergraduate biology studies may contribute to creating research vocations and generate the idea that science may influence all aspects of common life. However, laboratory practices are too often disconnected from current investigations and rarely address real-life questions that are really interesting for students.…

This activity presents an option for covering biology content while engaging students in an investigation that highlights the spirit of Halloween. Students are engaged in the story line and have fun trying to solve the mystery kidnapping by using science skills to examine the evidence and eliminate some ghoulish suspects. (Contains 1 figure.)

"Why would a deer print be in the city?" wondered a student. She had noticed the track near a grocery store that morning with her mother. She was familiar with deer and had noticed their prints on a trip to a local museum; however, she had never seen a deer in the city before this experience. As she retold the story to her classmates, her question…

One of the challenges higher education institutions face is to effectively endow science primary teachers with competences on "how", "where", "when" and "whether" to use technological resources (software and hardware) in teaching contexts. Teachers' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) requires…

Despite being criticised for placing little emphasis on thinking, the majority of laboratory work at school level is taught "via" expository "recipe-style" labs. This has been seen to result in students struggling to be able to apply the practical techniques they have learnt in the classroom outside the narrow environment in which they were…

The emerging field of urban ecology has the potential to engage urban youth in the practices of scientists by studying a locally relevant environmental problem. To this end, we are developing curriculum modules designed to engage students in learning science through the use of emerging information technology. In this paper, we describe the impact…

Increasingly, professional university programmes seek to develop graduates' generic skills and capabilities and their capacity to transfer skills to new situations. Professionally-oriented study should demonstrate not only academic rigour, but also genuine relevance and value to the profession. In disciplines such as science and engineering this…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…