This study reports about biology undergraduates' writing in a course with genre-based writing instruction. The students read, analyse and synthesise research articles using the Scientific Argumentation Model (SAM), a tool to make explicit the characteristics of the research article genre. We explored to what extent 21 students make a synthesis…

Structure in the form of feedback has been shown to be highly relevant to students learning. Offering feedback, stating clear expectations and instructions, might enhance students' perceived competence. The context chosen for this study were experiments studying bird flight in biology lessons. Students experimented in a scientific discovery…

The adoption and use of various eLearning systems to enhance the quality of education in secondary schools in Tanzania is becoming common. However, there is little evidence to suggest that students actually use them. Existing studies tend to focus on investigating students' attitude towards using these systems through surveys. Nonetheless, data…

An online curriculum about biological evolution was designed according to the "Promoting Evidentiary Reasoning and Self-Regulation Online" (PERSON) theoretical framework to support evidentiary reasoning and self-regulation. An efficacy study was conducted with 83 suburban high school biology students using design-based research methods.…

Previous studies have shown that students learn better from an online lesson when a gesturing pedagogical agent is added (Mayer & DaPra, 2012; Wang, Li, Mayer, & Liu, 2018). The goal of this study is to pinpoint which aspect of a gesturing pedagogical agent causes an improvement in learning from an online lesson. College students learned…

In efforts to increase scientific literacy and enhance the preparation of learners to pursue careers in science, there are growing opportunities for students and teachers to engage in scientific research experiences, including course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), undergraduate research experiences (UREs), and teacher research…

In 2015, Liberty, (Missouri) Public Schools was updating resources for several content areas. Content consultant Diana Laufenberg, executive director of Inquiry Schools, had been working with secondary teachers to study options for the best and most current instructional practices in social studies. As teachers considered using online resources…

We developed a hands-on course in molecular biology for undergraduate underrepresented in medicine (URM) students. To incentivize student preparation for team-based learning (TBL) activities, we implemented a novel grading schema that requires a minimum individual readiness assurance test (iRAT) score to share the team group readiness assurance…

English connects all areas of science around the world. Productive and receptive English-language skills are thus a crucial tool that schools must provide their students with in order to prepare them for higher education and professional life. The introduction of bilingual instruction of subject matter, often referred to as Content and Language…

This paper analyses the extent to which textbook images are designed using the Instructional Criteria for Image Analysis (ICIA) model in textbooks. The ICIA proposed that learning through images involves interaction between the learner, the image, and the activities with images proposed to the student. Images from the main text and activity…

Classroom action research (CAR) represents a midpoint between teacher reflection at one end and traditional educational research at the other. CAR is a process in which a teacher identifies problems in the context of his or her own classroom and then engages in investigative methods to address the problems. Teachers sometimes shy away from CAR,…

Purpose: The purpose of this preliminary, pre-post, interventional project was to (1) explore the pervasiveness of compassion fatigue & (2) promote self-care activities & evaluate the effectiveness of compassion fatigue education on reducing hospice nursing staffs' compassion fatigue symptoms in a single hospice care unit. Background and…

Student tutoring in innovative teaching and learning practices promotes personal and professional learning. Experiential learning theory underpins this research. An interpretive, qualitative approach and narrative strategy with purposive sampling was used. The tutor narrative accounts of tutoring the Research and Service-Learning module in…

Objective: To determine the efficacy of a high school biology curriculum focused on promoting nutrition literacy skills. Design: High school students participated in a six-week biology curriculum focused on the three subdomains of nutrition literacy: functional use of factual knowledge (FNL); interactive skills in seeking out information (INL);…

New advances in neurobiology are revealing that brain development and the learning it enables are directly dependent on social-emotional experience. Growing bodies of research reveal the importance of socially triggered epigenetic contributions to brain development and brain network configuration, with implications for social-emotional…