In this paper, a study of how adult vocational educators develop authenticity in their teaching within a Canadian community college context is presented. Six participants from different disciplines, five of whom were relatively new teachers, and one of whom had considerable experience, were interviewed three times over two years. With the…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether cooperative versus collaborative strategies used for a group project had differential effects on students' achievement, process and solution satisfaction, value and preference for collaboration, and perceptions of community of inquiry in online and blended environments. The study sample consisted of…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the biology content, instructional strategies, and assessment methods of 100 biological science websites that were appropriate for Grade 12 educational purposes. For the analysis of each website, an instrument, developed from the National Science Education Standards (NSES) for Grade 12 Life Science coupled…

While there has been much quantitative research done in the area of attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs, this study sought hear the voices of the middle school child. Therefore, this qualitative study investigated the attitudes toward mathematics and mathematics self-efficacy beliefs of middle school students in one middle school in western…

Frequently, students learn in science classes taught like traditional reading courses in which reading texts and answering questions is the main activity. The problem at one southern middle school is that students are not developing an understanding of science concepts and are doing poorly on standardized testing. Students are seldom given the…

Media literacy compels us to look anew at the most mundane, that which surrounds us: the media and our popular culture. From there media literacy compels us to accept that the media are constructed and to seek various ways to analyze them, while considering our own beliefs to evaluate for ourselves an ultimate interpretation. This process has the…

Graduate students in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, represent an important link in current reforms emphasizing inquiry-based learning and teaching, as they represent the future of the STEM professoriate. Although graduate students commonly hold teaching assistantships, they rarely receive training on how to…

This qualitative phenomenological research study used narrative inquiry to investigate the effective practices and beliefs of 10 Texas principals in high achieving majority Hispanic mid-level schools. Participant interviews were analyzed using the Creswell (2007) six step method for analyzing phenomenological studies. Findings from this study…

Background: Scholars and education reformers alike have re-ignited the importance of teaching science in the elementary grades of the public schools of America by disputing the traditional belief that K-4 learners are too young to learn and function within the nature of science learning and experimentation. The consideration rests on the findings…

We present a programme for a novel introductory lower-secondary chemistry course (seventh or eighth grade) that aims at the application of theories of science education, and in particular of conceptual/meaningful learning and of teaching methodology that encourages active and inquiry forms of learning The approach is rigorous with careful use of…

This article serves to provide theoretical grounding for the five core values of scholar-practitioner leadership and will investigate the cyclical pattern of inquiry-generated knowledge for educational practice. The core values of leadership embrace community, democracy, social justice, caring, and equity. After grounding the core values in…

This study investigated the impact of an open inquiry experience on elementary science methods students' understanding of celestial motion as well as the methods developed by students to answer their own research questions. Pre/post interviews and assessments were used to measure change in participants' understanding (N = 18). A qualitative…

Typically, the scientific method in science classrooms takes the form of discrete, ordered steps meant to guide students' inquiry. In this paper, we examine how focusing on the scientific method as discrete steps affects students' inquiry and teachers' perceptions thereof. To do so, we study a ninth-grade environmental science class in which…

This study examined the effectiveness of introducing elementary teachers to the scholarly literature on personal pronouns and hedges in classroom discourse, a professional development strategy adopted during a summer institute to enhance teachers' social understanding (i.e., their understanding of the social functions of language in science…

In this article, we invite readers into a conversation about ways of being in teaching. Through e-mails, telephone calls, and face-to-face meetings, we use our first conversations with each other as shared moments that we returned to, seeking to better understand how we made meaning in our individual school teaching careers, and how we continue to…