To assist preservice elementary teachers in attaining scientific competence, knowledge, and understanding of interdisciplinary concepts, a teacher education model--the combined individual microteaching, modeled teaching, and inquiry-based team-teaching (CIMIT) model--was established, and its effectiveness was evaluated. A quasiexperimental design…

Since the 1950s, educational literature has explored the potential of translating art criticism into classroom practices. This eventually led to the emergence of educational criticism as a distinctive form of inquiry in the 1970s. However, despite its potential for exploring educational experiences and evaluating educational programs, educational…

Developing models, using mathematics, and constructing explanations are three practices essential for science inquiry learning according to education reform efforts, such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). However, students struggle with these intersecting practices, especially when developing and interpreting…

Organizational patterns can serve as a teaching strategy for instructors and as a learning tool for students to develop their expository writing skills, which are commonly required for assignments (for example, laboratory reports and research papers) in Food Science courses and in their future careers. The article discusses the importance of…

Multidisciplinarity and the enrichment of science and mathematics education toward the so-called STEAM-approach where the A stands for art, has raised a lot of academic interest in the past decade. In this study, 5th and 6th graders from the greater Helsinki area (N = 390) participated in a several months long, Mars-colonization themed…

The Periodic Table of the Elements (PTE) is arguably one of the most central topics in chemistry. This article provides a critical review of current teaching practices of the PTE to high-school students and undergraduate university students. It also provides a new teaching model, the "periodic universe", for understanding of the PTE…

We adapted a multidisciplinary, project-based curriculum to introduce high school students to statistical inquiry. We examined student background characteristics, learning experiences, and course outcomes for 30 students aged 12 to 14 entering ninth grade who were involved in a 1-week, accelerated version of a Passion-Driven Statistics curriculum.…

This article explores the benefits of using digital technology to support and enhance students' understanding during mathematical inquiry. The use of digital technologies enabled students to focus on the problem-solving aspects of the task such as how to compare and represent the data effectively.

Polar research plays a vital role in developing our understanding of Earth's climate system. It is intrinsically interdisciplinary, lending itself to integration into existing undergraduate courses. Here we explore introducing undergraduates to polar research through computational guided inquiry (CGI) modules taught in a variety of courses and…

"Place-based education" refers to pedagogy that connects student learning with the local environment and students' lives. Educators' preoccupation with standardized test scores have increased the disconnect between formal education and student's life experiences. Schools have developed systems of learning in isolated subjects through…

In this paper, we explore how students' engagement varies in different STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) learning environments. More specifically, we focus on the significance of a learning environment applying an integrated STEM (iSTEM) approach and the significance of STEM learning environments' student-centredness. Moreover,…

This study examined the efficacy of a curriculum-based intervention for high school science students. Specifically, the intervention was two years of research-based, multidisciplinary curriculum materials for science supported by comprehensive professional development for teachers that focused on those materials. A modest positive effect was…

Taste perception was the focus of an undergraduate course in the health sciences that bridged the sciences and humanities. A problem-based learning approach was used to study the biological issues, whereas the cultural transmutations of these molecular mechanisms were explored using a variety of resources (novels, cookbooks, and films). Multiple…

The International Baccalaureate (IB) programme utilizes an inquiry-based multi-disciplinary approach and focuses on the teaching of critical-thinking skills. The IB programme is growing at a rapid rate within the United States, with the overall number of IB schools having more than doubled in the last five years. The purpose of the present study…

This article examines whether models of cross-curricular, context-based learning are more effective in engaging learners through generating conditions which interest, motivate, engage and inspire pupils through a variety of effective pedagogies. This article reports on a case study of two cohorts of primary PGCE trainee teachers (292) over two…