The Next Generation Science Standards regard biological structures at both the micro and macro levels as a core idea of life sciences and expect students to understand animals have external structures that perform diverse functions. Using the common creature of bees as a case, this study aimed to ascertain teenage students' ideas of bees through…

Bridging the theory-practice gap remains a challenge in preparing preservice elementary teachers for science teaching. Research experiences for undergraduates (REU) offer a potential way to help preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) come to value and implement research-based science teaching. REUs come in many forms but often take the form of…

There have been growing calls for inquiry, a practice-oriented way of engaging students in authentic scientific work, yet research has shown some challenges that might impede inquiry practices in educational settings. In this study, we proposed an approach that blends educational gaming with physical experiments. We developed an educational game,…

This study explores how high school and college history instructors' perspectives of experiential learning opportunities and high-impact practices influence their epistemic beliefs as history teachers. The research considers educators' pedagogical practices to align inquiry and historical thinking with experiential learning opportunities and…

Connections among the mathematics, science, and engineering disciplines have been recognized and affirmed in national standards. For example, the application of mathematical ideas and skills within science has been highlighted in national science standards for over 20 years. More recently, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS; NGSS Lead…

Knowledge building (KB) competencies are crucial for undergraduates' creative knowledge work and academic success. While there is substantial research on KB discourse, there are limited efforts in examining how KB competencies in the conceptual, metacognitive, socio-emotional, and epistemic dimensions are demonstrated in KB discourse and how the…

This study examined the impact of integrating virtual science inquiry activities with Predict-Observe-Explain (POE) teaching strategies on 5th graders' understanding of science concepts and epistemic beliefs in science. A cohort of 80 5th graders (mean age of 12 years old, 40 boys and 40 girls) from a public primary school in North China took part…

Science communication skills are increasingly emphasized as an important skill for undergraduate STEM students. In our science communication podcast project, students use the fundamentals of science communication to research a topic related to their inquiry-based lab project. Groups then create a podcast that presents the current science to a…

Anyone familiar with Matthew Lipman's Community of Inquiry is likely to acknowledge that it cultivates open-mindedness. Even so, bare recognition of this fact is not the same as having a detailed knowledge of what open-mindedness involves and how the Community of Inquiry helps to foster it. To extend our knowledge of these matters, we will conduct…

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an inquiry-based laboratory for sophomore-level organic chemistry into a mostly cookbook, existing laboratory curriculum. For the laboratory, students were required to generate their own procedures and use their own recorded data from prior laboratory assignments to identify an…

This article discusses four exemplary activities to highlight imaginative approaches that encourage critical literacy: building a jackdaw, responding to text through multimodal journaling, engaging in dramatic roleplay, and practicing multi-genre writing. Each activity connects imaginative approaches to critical literacy as learners view the world…

When the author tells people that her research focuses on how people teach and learn with historic places, the first response is usually "Oh, I love field trips." This sensibility, that field trips are required to teach about a place, is the single greatest barrier to understanding what can be learned from Place. Every Place is an…

During a project focusing on household waste a collaborative approach was deemed necessary. Researchers and stakeholders went through a series of workshops starting and ending with an appreciative inquiry which directed the ongoing action research process. This article discusses this process and presents a model for this methodology. Envisioning…

This article reports how physics pre-service teachers (PSTs) organize their investigations during an exploratory data analysis scenario, which we call scientific investigations by data exploration. In order to analyze the PSTs' investigations, we developed a learning environment in which learners investigate aspects influencing the particulate…

The purpose of this article is to outline some activities using resources that can generally be found in most kitchens and involve very little expense. It is based upon a workshop at the 2019 International Primary Science Education Conference (PSEC) in Edinburgh, which consisted of a wide variety of demonstrations of science in action, where…