Purpose: When using embedded, student-centered assessment tools for maker education, understanding the characteristics of a body of evidence can help teachers guide the assessment process. This study aims to examine assessment artifacts from a makerspace program and present a set of qualities that emerged, which researchers and maker educators can…

In this paper, we investigate an approach to supporting students' learning in science through a combination of physical experimentation and virtual modeling. We present a study that utilizes a scientific inquiry framework, which we call "bifocal modeling," to link student-designed experiments and computer models in real time. In this…

Student outcomes of inquiry-based teaching and learning were explored through student-report. Participants were six teachers and their 181 students in grades 9 through 12. Classes were categorized by level of inquiry (least, middle, and most). A student-administered questionnaire assessed the extent to which the three groups experienced 23…

Learning science requires the understanding of concepts and formal relationships, processes that--in themselves--have been proved to be difficult for students as they seem to encounter substantial problems with most of the inquiry-learning processes in which they engage. Models in inquiry-based learning have been considered as powerful…

Researchers are skeptical about the role of authoritative sources of information in a constructivist learning environment for fear of usurping students' critical thinking. Taking a social semiotics perspective in this study, authoritative sources are regarded as inscriptions of cultural artifacts, and science learning involves meaning-making of…