Background: Students need to practice their hands-on skills when they are young to develop confidence for their future careers. Nowadays, iSTEAM (integrated science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) contests provide opportunities for participants to experience meaningful and challenging hands-on tasks that may foster learning, and to…

There remains a clear deficiency in recruiting middle school students in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine fields, especially for those students entering physiology from underrepresented backgrounds. A large part of this may be arising from a disconnect between how science is typically practiced at a collegiate and K-12…

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate an authentic contextual learning framework with six constructs to model the relationships among essential factors of authentic contextual learning. In particular, this framework explores the relationships across six constructs, i.e. learning by applying, healthy learning, collaborative learning,…

Innovative instructional strategies are critical for fostering engagement and inclusivity in education, especially in technology-driven fields such as computer studies. Despite their potential, the broader impacts of modeling instructional approaches on student interest remain underexplored, particularly in secondary education. This study…

This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month's issue discusses how children think about the small-particle model of matter. What Richard Feynman referred to as the "atomic hypothesis" is perhaps more familiar to us as the small-particle model of matter. In its most basic form, the model states…

Perception is the reconstruction and interaction between the new information and prior knowledge in mind or in the process of internalization about the new information. It has three teaching procedures: First, teachers elicit the learners to acquire text meaning. Second, teachers create situation in practical teaching. Third, learners comprehend…

Despite the belief that emotions are important in the learning process, research in the area of emotions and learning, especially in science, is scant. Modelling and SSI argumentation have shared with respect to the emphasis in recent science standards reports as core scientific practices that need to be part of science teaching and learning. Even…

Students enjoy origami and like making everything from paper cranes to footballs out of small, colorful squares of paper. They can invent their own shapes and are intrigued by the polyhedrons that they can construct. Paper folding is fun, but where is the math? Unless teachers develop lessons that address mathematical objectives, origami could be…

A mixed methods design was used to evaluate the effects of four experiential learning programs on the interest and motivation of middle school students toward mathematics and science. The Expectancy-Value model provided a theoretical framework for the exploration of 336 middle school student participants. Initially, participants were generally…

The Memorial Middle School Agricultural Extension and Education Center is a new model for Extension. The center applies the Cooperative Extension Service System philosophy and mission to developing public education-based programs. Programming primarily serves middle school students and teachers through agricultural and natural resource science…

About 20 years ago, a number of Yukon schools took a different approach to outdoor education and outdoor pursuits. During the 1970s and 1980s, most Yukon high schools and junior high schools offered a course called Outdoor Education. These courses fit into the conventional blocks in a school timetable. Outdoor activities longer than these blocks…

"Listening to the River" (LTTR) is a watershed science education project funded by the National Science Foundation. The project aims to deliver watershed education experiences in and around Traverse City, Michigan, and also to develop a model that can be replicated in other locations. Inverness Research was contracted by the…

This article describes a hands-on activity in which students convert decimals to fractions, measure, make scale drawings, use algebraic formulas, and use visualization to construct a three-dimensional physical model of a portion of the seafloor. In the process, they learn about sound, speed, and ocean exploration. (Contains 2 figures.)

A little more than one hundred years ago, Wilbur and Orville Wright began building models of airfoils and testing them in wind tunnels in their search for an efficient wing. Models continue to be used today by aerospace engineers to prove concepts and launch dreams. To celebrate the centennial of the Wright brothers' historic flight, the authors…

The 12th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2019) is organized under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society in Montreal, Canada. The theme of this year's conference is EDM in Open-Ended Domains. As EDM has matured it has increasingly been applied to open-ended and ill-defined tasks…