Contemporary science education frameworks identify computational thinking as an essential science and engineering practice that supports scientific sense-making and engineering design. Despite national emphasis on teaching science, engineering, and computational thinking (NGSS Lead States, 2013), little research has investigated the ways that…

This study explores effects of participation by second-semester college general chemistry students in an extended, open-inquiry laboratory investigation. Verbal interactions among a student lab team and with their instructor over three open-inquiry laboratory sessions and two non-inquiry sessions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Coding…

Most studies about students' conceptions and conceptual change are based exclusively on the analysis language, which is treated as a tool to make private contents of the mind public to researchers. Following recent studies that focused on (a) language and discursive practice and (b) the pragmatics of communication that draws on talk, gestures, and…

Describes a method with data analyzed from two lessons on the quantitative assessment of content structure in classroom dialogue. Kinetic structure analysis was used and the fundamental coefficient of structure was calculated for each lesson. The method should provide new directions for looking at verbal interaction in classrooms. (PS)

Discusses research on kinetic structure, a microstructure concept (concerned with sequential organization of individual verbal statements or individual behavior acts). (PEB)

The study was designed to show the important role of communication in learning. It was postulated that a high-kinetic-structured lesson would facilitate a greater amount of affective learning than would a low-kinetic-structured lesson. The results supported the hypothesis. (BR)

Nine eighth grade classes were examined to identify the nature, distribution and patterning of verbal discourse. Included are a description of the categories used (Smith and Meux), a description of the nature of the verbal interaction in science lessons, and a resulting comparison between Australian, American, and New Zealand teachers. (DS)

Study compared patterns of teachers' verbal explanations of physics problems with patterns of scientific explanations evident in philosophical literature. Fourteen high school physics teachers were observed in micro-teaching situations and all verbal utterances analyzed. Results showed that constructs and lecturing are the most frequently used…

Presents some considerations about the variable of "wait time," a pause after a teacher question so that students can think or a pause after a student statement. (PEB)

High school chemistry students were grouped according to their scores on a divergent thinking test into either a homogeneous or heterogeneous group. Concluded that following an instructional film, there was more verbal interaction in the homogeneous group. (MLH)

Investigates the effect of using broadcast ITV to teach inquiry-oriented science lessons upon the criteria of selected verbal behaviors of K-3 teachers and students. (GA)

Studies effects of verbal participation during enquiry on achievement among three differently treated groups of four eighth-grade classes each with I.Q. test, reading test, sociometric, and academiometric results taken into account. Indicated the preference of strategies involving more students, particularly more girls, in class discussion. (CC)

Compared with teachers of "conventional" science courses, teachers who attended a summer workshop and then taught Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS) materials tended to increase the amount of indirect verbal influence used at the beginning of the school year, becoming more direct later, and asking more high-level questions (hypothesizing…

The Instrument for the Analysis of Science Teaching was used to evaluate verbal behavior of teacher trainees instructing pairs of students in each of two science concepts. The greatest differences in teacher behavior was due to differences between students, not differences in science content. (AL)

There are two major points to this study. First, not all modeling protocals are equally effective in changing the investigative teaching behavior of teachers. Second, three-dimensional representation used in interpreting verbal interaction matrices should not replace the procedures of conventional analysis of such matrices. (Author/MA)