This study examined how five minoritized female pre-service teachers negotiated their border crossing from learning to teach science to science teaching for the first time (microteaching) within the context of an elementary science teaching methods course. Perspectives from the border crossing literature guided this study and helped in addressing…

Introductory science courses can be a struggle for instructors and students not only because of the challenging nature of the material, but also due to differences in the background knowledge of students. Provision of pre-lecture resources reviewing or introducing key concepts is recommended to support diverse students. In this paper, we describe…

This research explores the impact of integrating smart water monitoring with internet of things (IoT) into 7th-grade science education using the problem-based learning (PBL) model. A quasi-experimental research design with a post-test-only control group is employed to compare the effectiveness of two learning groups: one using the regular PBL…

Peer learning has become a central feature in many postsecondary classrooms. Many peer learning activities feature near-peer instructors who had previously completed the course and who later serve as peer leaders. There are relatively few examples of activities in which students in a course act as true peer instructors for their classmates. One…

Aim/Purpose: This study aims to analyze the cognitive load experienced by secondary school students in Biology within m-learning environments and its impact on learning performance. Background: Cognitive load has become a critical issue that schools need to address to ensure students can excel in their learning without being overwhelmed. While…

While existing studies have underscored the educational benefits of generating explanatory hypotheses (EHs) in response to unexpected outcomes, empirical research on the underlying mechanisms driving their effectiveness in science learning remains limited. Thus, this study aimed to empirically examine the effectiveness of generating an EH for…

Hypothesis-based reasoning with conditionals is a skill that is required for engaging in integral activities of modern elementary school science-curricula. The teaching of this skill at this early stage of education, however, is demanding, particularly in whole school classes in which it is difficult to adapt teaching to children's individual…

Pregraduate students often have low success expectations toward their thermodynamics courses, which are often considered too abstract and remarkably difficult to understand. For this reason, they may not even try to reach any level of comprehension while settling for reproducing mathematical calculations and memorizing definitions to pass the…

There is widespread evidence showing that concept maps are effective for learning. However, little is known about the effects of various concept map activities. We conducted an experiment to examine the comparative effectiveness of three concept map activities: (1) translating a complete map to a paragraph format; (2) filling in concepts in a…

To make it easier for students to learn the contents of physics and increase their motivation to learn, physics teachers need to apply different teaching strategies. With this study we aimed to examine the impact of the modified Know-Want-Learn (mKWL) strategy in physics teaching on elementary school students' metacognition. The pedagogical…

The results of an earlier four-year longitudinal research study on the development of experimental design skills led to the conclusion that 12-13 year old students probably need more help to design experiments than had been offered to them in that project. This paper reports the findings of the first year of a further four-year empirical research…

This study examines the long-term retention of anatomical knowledge from 180 students after various repetition activities. The retention of anatomical knowledge was assessed by multiple-choice tests at five different points in time: before and after a course in Functional Anatomy, before and after repetition activities that occurred 14 weeks after…

This study investigated the effect of visual anthropomorphic stories on students' understanding of the particulate nature of matter and their level of anthropomorphic discourse. This study employed a quasi-experimental research design with pretest and posttest control groups. Science activities supported by visual anthropomorphic stories were…

This study investigated the extent to which the proposed Factory of Ideas (FOI) teaching approach impacted on students' understanding of energy based on their prior knowledge. The FOI is a didactic approach that, unlike the classic cognitive conflict approach, employs a variety of activities to offer students a scientific conception for comparison…

Over 40 years of research, concept maps have shown that they are beneficial for learning. However, much of this research has been conducted in laboratory settings. Although there are a few studies conducted in the classroom, there is little understanding of the instructional efficacy of using different types of concept maps. In a between-subjects…