This paper examines how mathematical understandings might emerge through student-centred inquiry. Data is drawn from a research project on student-centred curriculum integration that situated mathematics within authentic problem-solving contexts and involved students in collaboratively constructed curriculum. The project involved case studies in…

The conflict between the amount of material to be addressed in high school science classes, the need to prepare students for standardized tests, and the amount of time available forces science educators to make difficult pedagogical decisions on a daily basis. Hands-on and inquiry-based learning offer students more authentic learning experiences…

Within the field of science education, there remains little agreement as to the definition and characteristics of classroom inquiry. The emerging emphasis on scientific practices in science education reform discourse is underpinned by a need to better articulate the constituent elements of inquiry-based science. While a small number of…

The purpose of the study was to assess elementary students' science process skills, content knowledge, and concept knowledge after one year of participation in an elementary Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) program. This study documented the effects of the combination of intensive professional development and the use of…

As an aspect of the confluence between schooling and lived experiences, children develop literate identities and build personal theories of literacy. The purpose of this study was to explore the construction or children's literate identity in different contexts. Four children, two from Canada and two from the United States, were interviewed and…

Gene expression is a highly theoretical concept that requires advanced reasoning skills to comprehend. Often, students receive instruction but fail to replace prior conceptions and thus do not benefit. In order to investigate the reason for this failure, we used a directed inquiry activity that uses concrete analogies in both majors and non-majors…

Mobile technologies can support learning across different contexts as their portability enables them to be used by the learner in whichever context she or he is in. They can be particularly beneficial in informal and semiformal contexts where learners have more control over their learning goals and where motivation is often high. Inquiries in…

A quantitative nonexperimental survey study was developed to investigate Northeast Tennessee K-8 educators' perceptions of STEM education. This study was an examination of current perceptions of STEM education. Perceived need, current implementation practices, access to STEM resources, definition of STEM, and the current condition of STEM in…

This thesis explores the design and evaluation of a collaborative, inquiry learning Intelligent Tutoring System for ill-defined problem spaces. The common ground in the fields of Artificial Intelligence in Education and Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning is investigated to identify ways in which tutoring systems can employ both automated…

Cognitive load theorists claim that problem-centered instruction is not an effective instruction because it is not compatible with human cognitive structure. They argue that the nature of problem-centered instruction tends to over-load learner working memory capacity. That is why many problem-centered practices fail. To better support students and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the shift of Thai teachers' views of learning and their pedagogical practices from the traditional approach to be more centered on an argument-based inquiry approach (ABI) in Thai classrooms, where teachers and learners have long been familiar with the lecture-based tradition. Other than examining the…

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe teaching actions--embedded in the "Science Writing Heuristic approach," a systematic teaching approach that integrates literacy instruction and argument-based inquiry learning of science--supportive of the cross-disciplinary literacy expectations necessary to compete in the 21st…

The authors present work towards automatically assessing data collection behaviors as middle school students engage in inquiry within a physics microworld. In this study, the authors used machine learned models that can detect when students test their articulated hypotheses, design controlled experiments, and engage in planning behaviors using…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to examine attitude and achievement among fifth grade students participating in inquiry and lecture-based forms of instruction through interactive television. Participants (N = 260) were drawn from registered users of NASA's Digital Learning Network[TM]. The first three levels of Bloom's Revised…

Nursing education is at a crossroad today. Stressors in nursing programs include expanding enrollments to meet growing workforce demands for more registered nurses, demanding workloads with low average nursing faculty salaries compared to practice peers, and growing numbers of faculty retirements. The purpose of this study was to identify the…