As the field of education continues to grow, new methods and approaches to teaching are being developed with the goal of improving students' understanding of concepts. While research exists showing positive effects for particular teaching methods in small case studies, generalizations to larger populations of students, which are needed to…

In spite of considerable evidence of the effectiveness of active learning and other contemporary teaching methods, barriers to adoption of those methods, such as possible student resistance, continue to exist. This study addresses student resistance by analyzing data from 1,051 students who completed our Student Response to Instructional Practices…

Interdisciplinary competence is important in academia for both employability and sustainable development. However, to date, there are no specific interdisciplinary education models and, naturally, no empirical studies to assess them. Since problem-based learning (PBL) and project-based learning (PjBL) are learning approaches that emphasize…

In this article, we argue that when complex sociopolitical issues such as ethnocentrism and racial segregation are represented as complex, emergent systems using agent-based computational models (in short agent-based models or ABMs), discourse about these representations can disrupt social studies teacher candidates' dispositions of teaching…

This study explores the effects of various motivational variables operating within 44 English classes on 1-year-long gains in the English reading proficiency of 1,149 Japanese university students. The study adds new knowledge to the recent outcomes of second language (L2) motivational studies in 3 major ways. First, the explanatory variables…

With the ever-increasing availability of online education opportunities, understanding the factors that influence online student satisfaction and success is vital to enable administrators to engage and retain this important stakeholder group. The purpose of this ex-post-facto, nonexperimental quantitative study was to investigate the impact of…

We tested the educational utility of "teaching in students' preferred ways" as a new autonomy-supportive way of teaching to enhance students' autonomy and conceptual learning. A pilot test first differentiated preferred versus nonpreferred ways of teaching. In the main study, a hired teacher who was blind to the purpose of the study…

Higher education plays a key role in national economic development. According to statistics from the Ministry of Education (MOE), there were 166 higher education institutions (HEIs) in Taiwan in 2014. This form of mass education provides more educational opportunities for students, but also causes problems like low teaching quality and…

This study examined the effects of teachers' biology-specific dimensions of professional knowledge--pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and content knowledge (CK)--and cognitively activating biology instruction, as a feature of instructional quality, on students' learning. The sample comprised 39 German secondary school teachers whose lessons on…

Objective: Statway is a community college pathways initiative developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching designed to accelerate students' progress through their developmental math sequence to acquiring college math credit in statistics. Statway is a multifaceted change initiative designed to address the complex problems…

Urban school districts face a dilemma in providing professional development support for teachers in transition to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Districts need to maximize the quality and amount of professional development within practical funding constraints. In this paper, we discuss preliminary results from a…

The main purpose of this study was to examine the validity of the Teacher Intentions to Integrate Technology in Education Scale using pre-service teacher samples from three countries on three continents--Turkey, Spain and the United States. Study participants were 550 pre-service teachers from three universities in Turkey, Spain and the USA (219,…

This research explores one university's effort to facilitate integrative learning with a reflective ePortfolio process. Integrative learning is conceptualized using a multi-theoretical construct consisting of transfer of learning, reflective practice, and self-authorship. As part of the evaluation of this process, students completed a pre-survey…

Past work has demonstrated that language comprehension ability correlates with general chemistry course performance with medium effect sizes. We demonstrate here that language comprehension's strong cognitive grounding can be used to inform effective and equitable pedagogies, namely, instructional interventions that differentially aid low-skilled…

The purpose of this study was to identify instructor behaviors that lead to positive student outcomes in online courses. The study investigated the relationship between 12 predictive variables and three measures of student success (assignment grade, course grade, and student retention) in online courses. Archived online courses at a rural…