In order to challenge our undergraduate students' enduring misconception that plants, animals, and fungi must be "advanced" and that other eukaryotes traditionally called protists must be "primitive," we have developed a 24-hour take-home guided inquiry and investigation of live Physarum cultures. The experiment replicates…

The laboratory setting is an exciting and gratifying place to teach because you can actively engage the students in the learning process through hands-on activities; it is a dynamic environment amenable to collaborative work, critical thinking, problem-solving and discovery. The guided inquiry-based approach described here guides the students…

With this case study, we explored efforts to connect pre-service elementary teachers (PSTs) and campus scientists through place-based inquiry instruction. Using the framework of Community of Practice (CoP), the research question guiding this study was: what features of our place-based inquiry course intervention (involving PSTs and scientists)…

In the past ten years, mobile learning (m-learning) has created a new learning environment that enables learners, through active learning aids. Instructional pervasive gaming (IPG) seems to be an innovative way introduced to enhance m-learning. This study employed a theoretical IPG model to construct a cultural-based pervasive game. Individual and…

This study examined student perceptions of effective online instruction, by means of the levels of student connectedness, within the context of the Community of Inquiry model. Both the Online Student Connectedness Survey (OSCS) and the Community of Inquiry (CoI) survey have been previously used to study student connectedness and student perception…

This dissertation describes and analyzes the work of a semester-long teacher research study of inquiry-based and reflective teaching and learning strategies and their impact on students' preparation for future learning. I explore relevant scholarship on knowledge transfer, classroom ecologies, and student agency to set the stage for a discussion…

The HIV/AIDS pandemic's dramatic impact on African life and culture has influenced educational sector significantly. As a result of the chronic crisis, teacher retention in Zambia has reached abysmal lows. This qualitative narrative inquiry study explored teacher retention in a Zambian school through the lens of social constructivism. The study…

The effective implementation of any educational reform is largely dependent on teachers' preparation. In the case of the National English Program in Basic Education (NEPBE), implemented in secondary schools in Mexico by the Secretariat of Public Education in 2009, teacher preparation strategies have been designed by both public and private higher…

This article promotes project-based learning in English education as a way to combat the loss of cultural relevancy under the pressures of standardization. Project-based learning, a specific pedagogy consistent with Paulo Freire's problem-posing theory of education, is one way to create student-centered learning experiences that allow students to…

This study compares the inquiry competence of the 8th-grade students participating in the science and environmental education program GLOBE in the Czech Republic with a sample of students of the same age not participating in the program from the Slovak and Czech Republics. Inquiry competence is analyzed as a set of variables representing students'…

Individual aptitude, attitudes, and behavior in inquiry-based learning (IBL) settings may affect work and learning performance outcomes during activities using different technologies. To encourage multifaceted learning, factors in IBL settings must be statistically significant and effective, and not cognitively or psychomotor intensive. We…

Empathy and interdisciplinarity are both concepts that are current and relevant--across professions, in research, and in academia. This paper describes a large, interdisciplinary, project-based assignment, the Empathy Project, which allows students to delve into and increase comfort and skill with interdisciplinary thinking and collaborative…

Science education research has recommended cooperative inquiry based science in the primary science context for more than two decades but after more than 20 years, student achievement in science has not substantially improved. This study, through direct observation and analysis, investigated content-related student interactions in an authentic…

Students' frequent exposure to inquiry-based science teaching is presumed more effective than their exposure to traditional didactic instruction in helping improve competence in content knowledge and problem solving. Framed through theoretical perspectives of inquiry-based instruction and culturally relevant pedagogy, this study examines this…

The purpose of the study was to investigate how young students engage in an inquiry-based project driven by real-life contexts. Elementary school children were engaged in a small inquiry project centred on marine biodiversity and species adaptations. All activities included the exploration of an out-of-school setting as a learning context. A total…