In Germany, science education standards for students at the end of grade nine have been in existance since 2005. Some of these standards are dedicated to scientific inquiry (e.g. experimentation). They describe which abilities learners are expected to possess at the end of grade nine. In the USA, several documents describe standards for…

Students' achievement in Biology is often looked up as a benchmark to evaluate the mode of teaching and learning in higher education. Problem-based learning (PBL) is an approach that focuses on students' solving a problem through collaborative groups. There were eighty samples involved in this study. The samples were divided into three groups: ICT…

Research shows that computer animations are especially helpful in fields such as chemistry and in this mixed-methods study, we investigate the educational effectiveness of Bio-Organic Reaction Animations (BioORA), a 3-D software, in four undergraduate biochemistry classes at different universities. Statistically significant findings indicate that…

Attracting significant attention from the media and policymakers, international student assessments are serving as pressures on and challenges for individual countries. Even so, paying attention only to publicly released rankings in international student assessments may lead to superficial interpretations of the assessment results. Simply equating…

Recent data have suggested that despite massive outlays on educational reform Qatar consistently ranks as one of the least academically proficient countries in key areas of literacy. Of the seventy-four countries that participated in PISA 2009 Qatar ranked between sixty-seven and sixty-nine in mathematics, reading and science literacy. Although…

The laboratory setting is an exciting and gratifying place to teach because you can actively engage the students in the learning process through hands-on activities; it is a dynamic environment amenable to collaborative work, critical thinking, problem-solving and discovery. The guided inquiry-based approach described here guides the students…

In Germany, science education standards for students at the end of grade nine have been in existence since 2005. Some of these standards are dedicated to scientific inquiry (e.g. experimentation). They describe which abilities learners are expected to possess at the end of grade nine. In the USA, several documents describe standards for…

This study examined how using two different ways of displaying the solar system--a true-to-scale mode vs. an orrery mode--affected students' knowledge of astronomical concepts. Solar system displays were presented in a software application on a handheld tablet computer. In the true-to-scale mode, users navigated a simulated three-dimensional solar…

This study compares the inquiry competence of the 8th-grade students participating in the science and environmental education program GLOBE in the Czech Republic with a sample of students of the same age not participating in the program from the Slovak and Czech Republics. Inquiry competence is analyzed as a set of variables representing students'…

Worldwide studies have revealed an important issue in that an increasing percentage of students within the X-Y age group are not interested in science. Many students, especially females, have negative feelings and attitudes toward science, which discourages them from continuing with scientific inquiries. There are limited studies related to the…

This study investigated the effectiveness of using Google Docs in collaborative concept mapping (CCM) by comparing it with a paper-and-pencil approach. A quasi-experimental study was conducted in a physics course. The control group drew concept maps using the paper-and-pencil method and face-to-face discussion, whereas the experimental group…

To identify ways that national culture, school characteristics, and individual attributes impact the victimization of students in Grade 8, data from the United States and three East Asian countries (i.e., Japan, S. Korea, and Taiwan) were compared using the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Hierarchical Liner…

Students' frequent exposure to inquiry-based science teaching is presumed more effective than their exposure to traditional didactic instruction in helping improve competence in content knowledge and problem solving. Framed through theoretical perspectives of inquiry-based instruction and culturally relevant pedagogy, this study examines this…

In this paper, we propose computational scientific inquiry (CSI) as an innovative model for learning important scientific knowledge and new practices for "doing" science. This approach involves the use of a "game-like" virtual world for students to experience virtual biological fieldwork in conjunction with using an agent-based…

In this paper we elaborate and extend the work of the EDUsummIT 2015 Thematic Working Group 7 (TWG7) by proposing a set of indicators on quality Technology-Enhanced Learning and Teaching (TEL&T). These indicators are intended as one component of a set of global indicators that could be used to monitor implementation of the Education 2030…