The number of students interested in pursuing STEM in post-secondary institutions is on the decline. This is due to several factors, one being a lack of effective and innovative science enrichment (summer or after-school) programs for high school students (Baran et al., 2019; Kong et al., 2014). While traditional lecture-based science courses…

The Higher School Certificate is a certificate that recognises the successful completion of secondary education in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The most recent enrolment information available suggests that at least 13,472 students undertaking the NSW Higher School Certificate (HSC) in 2019 conducted research projects that involved human…

There is growing attention to the potential for developing professional learning experiences for content area teachers to infuse computational thinking (CT), which refers to the set of problem-solving practices related to the computer science discipline, into their classrooms. Although research has begun to document professional learning models…

Many university and high school introductory physics courses include a laboratory portion where students follow a manual to conduct "cookbook" experiments. Here, we present an authentic research project for introductory physics students that focuses on kinematics that can be done outside a formal laboratory space. This experiment can be…

This paper presents findings from a larger research project that provides insight into the attitudes of high-school students who were taught using different types of mathematics curricula when they were in middle school. A total of 44 12th-grade students from 10 high schools in the same urban school district were interviewed. Eighteen (41%) of…

Information literacy (IL) is a multifaceted skill that encompasses information seeking, identifying research questions, finding answers to research questions, and then evaluating and using information appropriately (ALA 2001). Much research has been conducted on the low level of IL found amongst high school students. Failure to make connections…

Advances in technology and communication have increased the amount of statistical information delivered through everyday media. The importance of statistics in everyday life has led to calls for increased attention to statistical literacy in the mathematics curriculum (Watson 2006). Gal (2004) sees statistical literacy as the need for students to…

Research projects are worth doing. They raise student interest in science and offer experience in authentic scientific practices. Implementing independent research projects among students requires the teacher to be skilled not only in scientific research but also in project management. Teachers' duties include--but are not limited…

During a one-semester-long research project with high school students, we deployed and gauged efficiency of two different reform teaching methods: reading, presenting, and questioning (RPQ) and experimenting and discussion (ED). In this paper we report on changes in students' attitudes and beliefs about physics and learning physics. We used the…

To address the persistent failure of schooling to support underserved students, youth participatory action research (YPAR) has emerged as an alternative and critical paradigm for educational practice. YPAR re-centers authority on marginalized voices and understands research as a tool for social change. Grounded in critical pedagogy, such projects…

The authors investigate how innovative research assignments based on students' personal interests can help them want to develop their research skills. They find that multimodal communication and representation, including film, written scripts, comic strips, music, and photography, encourage students to carefully select information from the…

This article describes the methods and impact of a student-teacher-scientist research partnership on student attitudes. The partnership objective was to teach students about the diverse roles of sharks in the marine environment while personally connecting students with scientific study. Students (N = 229) participated in lessons about shark…

Teacher research--often called "action research"--is an intentional and systematic inquiry into one's own classroom practice with the goal of improved student learning (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1993). In this article, the authors present a teacher research project undertaken to improve student understanding of the gas laws in a high…

This study guide has been developed to accompany the film "Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh." The guide is organized in two sections: Preview and Postview. In the Preview, students are introduced to Hannah Senesh. They learn the historical context of her story, and they begin to consider some of the main themes…

The purpose of this research project was to use an experimental design research methodology to compare learning and attitudinal effects of two different design instructional strategies on randomly selected and assigned 11th and 12th grade students. Through the use of a common technological based problem, students were guided through a design…