The term discovery applies herein to the successful outcome of inquiry in which a significant personal, professional or scholarly breakthrough or insight occurs, and which is individually or socially acknowledged as a key contribution to knowledge. Since discoveries culminate at fixed points in time, discoveries can serve as an outcome metric for…

In general, laboratory experiments focus on traditional chemical disciplines. While this approach allows students the ability to learn and explore fundamental concepts in a specific area, it does not always encourage students to explore interdisciplinary science. Often little transfer of knowledge from one area to another is observed, as students…

We examined the role child factors on the acquisition and transfer of learning the control of variables strategy (CVS) via instruction or self-discovery. Seventy-six fourth graders and 43 sixth graders were randomly assigned to a group receiving direct CVS instruction or a discovery learning group. Prior to the intervention, cognitive, scientific,…

How can technologies and digital learning experiences be used to support underserved, under-resourced, and underprepared students? For many years, educators, researchers, and policy makers looking for strategies to close the achievement gap and improve student learning have sought solutions involving new uses of technology, especially for students…

There is still much to be learnt about best practices in leveraging digital resources for learning in higher education. Research on student interactions with online video indicates such practices are as minimal as setting passive-receptive viewing through to teacher-structured purposeful engagement. This position paper focuses on teacher-set…

Organic chemistry problems that interrelate and integrate synthesis with spectroscopy are presented. These synthesis-spectroscopy roadmap (SSR) problems uniquely engage second-year undergraduate organic chemistry students in the personal discovery of organic chemistry. SSR problems counter the memorize-or-bust strategy that many students tend to…

In this paper, we describe laboratory and classroom exercises designed to obtain the "fundamental" equation of a rubber band by combining experiments and theory. The procedure shows students how classical thermodynamics formalism can help to obtain empirical equations of state by constraining and guiding in the construction of the…

The following paper examines the results of a research study in which a virtual world, Quest Atlantis (QA), was used to engage students in exploratory learning to teach about water quality issues. The main aim of the research was to find out how new digital learning environments and educational technology, such as virtual worlds, can be introduced…

The aim of the present study was to compare the types of exploratory procedures employed by children when exploring bidimensional tactile patterns and correlate the use of these procedures with the children's shape drawing performance. 18 early blind children, 20 children with low vision and 24 age-matched blindfolded sighted children aged…

There is much current debate about the purpose and usefulness of educational research and the perceived communication gap between teaching professionals and academic researchers. UK government intervention into initial teacher education has in recent decades contributed to this divide by favouring school-based training. The most common route into…

Greek school community emphasizes on the discovery direction of teaching methodology in the school Environmental Education (EE) in order to promote Education for the Sustainable Development (ESD). In ESD school projects the used methodology is experiential teamwork for inquiry based learning. The proposed tool checks whether and how a school…

Through a comparative case study, Sheridan and colleagues explore how makerspaces may function as learning environments. Drawing on field observations, interviews, and analysis of artifacts, videos, and other documents, the authors describe features of three makerspaces and how participants learn and develop through complex design and making…

This study uses a new communicational lens that conceptualizes the activity of learning mathematics as interplay between mathematizing and identifying in order to study how the emotional, social, and cognitive aspects of learning mathematics interact with one another. The proposed framework is used to analyze the case of Idit, a girl who started…

A 9-month training experiment was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of highly and minimally guided discovery interventions targeting the add-1 rule (the sum of a number and one is the next number on the mental number list) and doubles relations (e.g., an everyday example of the double 5 + 5 is five fingers on the left hand and five fingers on the…

Increasingly, the traditional professional development (PD) model at 4-year institutions fails to meet the evolving needs of faculty. The traditional model of PD faces unique implementation challenges, including developing offerings that appeal to a wide range of disciplines and topics, dealing with limited faculty availability, physical/campus…