Common objects are made of materials that have obvious physical features which, although readily observable, may be overlooked by children. Helping young children to notice characteristic features -- scientifically referred to as properties -- equips them to discern common and distinct (diagnostic) features. Once children begin to recognise…

Two studies ask whether scaffolded children (n = 243, 5-6 years and 9-10 years) recognize that assistance is needed to learn to use complex artifacts. In Study 1, children were asked to learn to use a toy pantograph. While children recognized the need for assistance for indirect knowledge, 70% of scaffolded children claimed that they would have…

Optical polarization phenomena are omnipresent in physics, chemistry, biology, and technology. Studying optical polarization is best done through an interdisciplinary approach that combines biology and technology, which usually makes things more interesting to students. Seeing Haidinger's brush for the first time can be an exciting discovery for…

Nanochemistry is an important aspect of modern chemical science. Though few educational institutions teach nanochemistry as a formal course, general exposure of students to nanoscience is yet important. Thus, we present a nanochemical activity that could be used as part of many chemistry courses or laboratories based on ChemToy2. This activity is…

Teacher noticing has become increasingly acknowledged as a fundamental aspect of teacher professional competence. Teacher education scholars have examined how the development of noticing might be supported both in initial teacher education and in professional development. In mathematics teacher education, several studies have explored the use of…

Whereas we acknowledge that drawing as process and product within the visual arts is complex and wide ranging, this study concentrates on testing the effectiveness of different pedagogical strategies for enhancing accuracy as a learning objective in drawing from observation. Based on our collective experience teaching observational drawing, we…

This study examines how well school groups in the Coastal Plains region of a southeastern state align with the socio-emotional strategies for four-year-olds outlined by the Key Practices in the Pyramid Model Framework (Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool-Research Edition [Manual], Baltimore, MD: Brookes, 2014). Many schools in these groups serve…

How can faculty development (FD) support responsive innovations? At one end of the spectrum are rich, time-intensive programs grounded in frameworks like the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, where instructors' innovations are part of larger projects in which they design and conduct comprehensive research studies in their courses. At the other…

This study aims to investigate the predictive validities of three different traffic psychological assessment systems used in Turkey (ART 2020, TRAFIKENT and Vienna Test System) by using systematic observation of driving behaviour in natural traffic settings. For this purpose, 176 drivers were evaluated by observers and then tested in three…

Supported by decades of research on praise and its effect on student behaviors, we developed the Behavior-Specific Praise--Observation Tool (BSP-OT) to measure characteristics of effective praise. We evaluated interrater reliability of the BSP-OT to measure praise specificity, contingency, and variety using intraclass correlation (ICC) and Cohen's…

The purpose of this heuristic narrative study was to use teacher voice to gain a stronger understanding of what teachers need for the meaningful use of the evaluation process for improving teaching and learning. Data collected and analyzed from eight co-researchers, who represented eight different suburban districts, consisted of an evaluation…

Science teachers should be able to notice student preconceptions in order to adapt instructions to their students' needs and support the learning process. Noticing as a core practice of teaching should thus be implemented early in science teacher education. A crucial prerequisite for noticing is knowledge about students' preconceptions, which is…

In this study, we examined the scoring and generalizability assumptions of an explicit instruction (EI) special education teacher observation protocol using many-faceted Rasch measurement (MFRM). Video observations of classroom instruction from 48 special education teachers across four states were collected. External raters (n = 20) were trained…

In the context of a professional learning research project we investigated the nature of support offered to classroom teachers and school mathematics leaders to facilitate teachers' implementation of sequences of challenging tasks. End of year questionnaire data were collected from 70 Foundation to Year 2 teachers and ten numeracy leaders who…

The Reflective Interaction Observation Scale (RIOS™) was developed as a research tool to identify the extent to which a supervisory session demonstrates a reflective process grounded in infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) principles and practice. It is aligned with the competencies of the Endorsement for Culturally Sensitive,…