In most primary science classes, students are taught science inquiry skills by way of learning by doing. Research shows that explicit instruction may be more effective. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of explicit instruction on the acquisition of inquiry skills. Participants included 705 Dutch fifth and sixth graders. Students…

Young children are able to benefit from early science teaching but many preschool teachers have not had opportunities to deepen their own understanding of science or to develop their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in relation to specific science topics and concepts. This study presents the results of efficacy research on Foundations of…

Background: High-stakes assessments, such the Graduate Records Examination, have transitioned from paper to computer administration. Low-stakes research-based assessments (RBAs), such as the Force Concept Inventory, have only recently begun this transition to computer administration with online services. These online services can simplify…

This study reports the effect of computer models as formative assessment on high school students' understanding of the nature of models. Nine high school teachers integrated computer models and associated formative assessments into their yearlong high school chemistry course. A pre-test and post-test of students' understanding of the nature of…

The teaching practices of recognizing and responding to students' ideas during instruction are often called formative assessment, and can be conceptualized by four abilities: designing formative assessment tasks, asking questions to elicit student thinking, interpreting student ideas, and providing feedback that moves student thinking forward.…

Teachers make a difference for the outcome of their students in science classrooms. One focus in this context lies on teachers' professional knowledge. We describe this knowledge according to three domains, namely (1) content knowledge (CK), (2) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and (3) curricular knowledge (CuK). We hypothesise a positive…

Educational games have the potential to be innovative forms of learning assessment, by allowing us to not just study their knowledge but the process that takes students to that knowledge. This paper examines the mediating role of players' moves in digital games on changes in their pre-post classroom measures of implicit science learning. We…

We compared learning cycle and expository formats for teaching about plant biodiversity in an inquiry-oriented university biology lab class (n = 465). Both formats had preparatory lab activities, a hands-on lab, and a postlab with reflection and argumentation. Learning was assessed with a lab report, a practical quiz in lab, and a multiple-choice…

Empirical analysis of secondary biology classrooms revealed that, on average, 68% of teaching time in Germany revolved around processing tasks. Quality of instruction can thus be assessed by analyzing the quality of tasks used in classroom discourse. This quasi-experimental study analyzed how teachers used tasks in 38 videotaped biology lessons…

This study examines the relationship between teacher knowledge and student learning for 9,556 students of 181 middle school physical science teachers. Assessment instruments based on the National Science Education Standards with 20 items in common were administered several times during the school year to both students and their teachers. For items…

Research Findings: This study compared the effects of content-based shared book-reading instruction versus an explicit vocabulary-only condition on the vocabulary development of preschool dual language learners (DLLs). Using shared book reading as the mode of instruction, we randomly assigned 48 bilingual preschool teachers and 281…

A potential method for teaching geospatial thinking and reasoning (GTR) is through geospatially enabled learning technologies. We developed an energy resources geospatial curriculum that included learning activities with geographic information systems and virtual globes. This study investigated how 13 urban middle school teachers implemented and…

This mixed methods study was designed to compare the effect of using an inquiry teaching methodology and a more traditional teaching methodology on the learning gains of students who were taught a five-week conceptual change unit on density. Seventh graders (N = 479) were assigned to five teachers who taught the same unit on density using either a…

The Science-in-CTE pilot study tested a curriculum integration model that enhanced the science that oc-curs in CTE curricula. The study replicated the National Research Center for Career and Technical Ed-ucation's (NRCCTE) Math-in-CTE experimental research design (Stone, Alfeld, & Pearson, 2008) with applied science in secondary agricultural…

The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to measure the effect of a student-centered instructional method called guided inquiry on the achievement of students in a unit of study in high school biology. The study used a non-random sample of 109 students, the control group of 55 students enrolled in high school one, received…