Surveys that focused on academic and life skill development were collected from alumni who attended Avalon Charter School in St Paul, Minnesota. Avalon is a small public charter school that uses project-based learning as their primary teaching method. Forty-two alumni responded to the online survey. Students ranked life skills such as creativity,…

Contemporary instructional approaches expect students to be active producers of knowledge. This leads to the need for creation of instructional tools and tasks that can offer students opportunities for active learning. This study examines the effect of a computational experiment as an instructional tool-for Grade 12 students, using a computer…

In this paper we share the experience of an interactive method of teaching that involves every student in the learning process in the classroom. We describe an interactive class conducted over a two year period for premedical students. The process involved three stages namely a study session, a test-yourself session and a review session. Through…

To assess the effect of debate format on learning, four formats were separately employed in an environmental issues course. Learning was greatest when students wrote about a debate they witnessed, the teacher provided debate questions, and students received a reward for winning. Students valued debates for developing their arguing skills, used the…

Instructors often use Microsoft PowerPoint lectures and handouts as support tools to provide students with the main concepts of the lectures. Some instructors and researchers believe that PowerPoint encourages student passivity. We conducted 2 studies to determine whether the use of content-based questions (CBQs) would enhance learning when…

Cooperating teachers (n = 684) from 40 accredited programs rated the adequacy of their student teachers' competence and some features of the institution's student-teaching program. Their ratings were at the high end of a 5-point scale (4.0+) and showed that the teachers said that both their students and the program were more than…

Pacesetting high schools, middle grades schools and technology centers have changed classroom and other practices to prepare students to meet postsecondary requirements and rising workplace needs. The strategies include raising expectations, project-based learning, guidance and advisement, improving students' reading and writing skills,…

The Take-away Technique was used in High School Physics and Physical Science courses for the unit on Newtonian mechanics in a teacher (6) by grade level (4) partially crossed design (N = 272). All classes received the same IE instructional treatment. The experimental group (classrooms) did a short Take-away after each class summarizing the key…

In a larger study on teachers' beliefs about science teaching, one component looks at how school environmental context factors influence inquiry-based science instruction. Research shows that three broad categories of school environmental factors (human, sociocultural, design) impact inquiry-based teaching in some way. A mixed-method, sequential,…

The 2006 National Science Board called for new strategies and instructional materials for teachers to better serve English Learners' (EL) needs. Bilingual Collaborative Online Projects in science were created to assist ELs' construction of science knowledge, facilitate academic English acquisition, and improve science learning. Two bilingual…

Candidates in teacher education programs who are training to become secondary education content area teachers are required in most programs to enroll in a class dealing with teaching reading in the content areas. A number of these candidates reluctantly attend these courses and question the appropriateness of the content they are required to…

Research suggests that Project-Based Learning (PBL) can be an effective way to engage and motivate middle level learners. Thoughtfully designed and implemented PBL can be more effective than traditional instruction for teaching concept mastery in core academic disciplines, supporting long-term knowledge retention, improving mastery of 21st century…

In France, project activities figure predominantly in technology education. The general idea behind learning based on project activity is to allow the pupil to get involved in the activity in question, with the pupil tackling real situations rather than ones of an abstract nature. But too often, we notice that the pedagogical strategies used by…

Project-based learning (PBL) and cooperative learning are, in various aspects, very superior education methodologies compared to other traditional ones. They are highly appropriate methodologies for elective courses, as they exert a strong attraction on the students, quite apart from their educational advantages. This paper describes how PBL and…

This exploratory study examines how a series of laboratory activities designed using a new instructional model, called Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI), influences the ways students participate in scientific argumentation and the quality of the scientific arguments they craft as part of this process. The two outcomes of interest were assessed with a…