In today's educational landscape, social studies classes are characterized by controversial issues (CIs) that teachers handle differently using various ideologies. These CIs have become more and more popular, particularly in heterogeneous communities. The actual classroom practices for teaching social studies courses are unclear in the context of…

The main purpose of the present study is to examine the attitudes, perceptions and experiences of the teachers participating in the planning of teaching in the context of the Lesson Study. The present work, which is part of a wider research effort, followed a mixed methodological planning for reasons of triangulation. The survey was conducted from…

This paper is based on the data collected from a longitudinal study of seven maintained, secondary schools in England that have adopted Musical Futures as an approach to teaching music. The research had a particular focus on key stage 3 (11-14). For the purposes of this paper, data gained from 18 music staff and 325 student interview…

Instructors of a middle school gifted language arts class implemented a 30-day unit of study on mindfulness in order to help students learn techniques to alleviate stress, perfectionistic tendencies, and anxiety. Practicing mindfulness techniques, such as meditation, provides individuals with tools to understand the mind and body and encourages…

Instructional technologies such as iPads are changing the classroom learning environment. This study was designed to investigate the impact a teacher's sense of self-efficacy regarding the use of instructional technology has on a teacher's instructional practices. A convergent parallel mixed method study was used to examine this problem. The focus…

Well-designed laboratories can help students master content and science practices by successfully completing the laboratory experiments. Upper-division chemistry laboratory courses often present special challenges for instruction due to the instrument intensive nature of the experiments. To address these challenges, particularly those associated…

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of the activities, which are prepared by teaching techniques that support scientific creativity, on the scientific creativity levels of prospective pre-school teachers. In the research, combined design is used, which is one of the mixed research approaches. The study group of the…

How to prepare teachers to be effective in our nations' classrooms seems to get increasingly complex, yet the links between teacher education and teachers' eventual practices are little understood. Using complexity theory as a theoretical framework, this mixed-methods study investigated writing teacher practices of 23 elementary teachers. Twelve…

Antibiotic resistance is typically used to justify education about evolution, as evolutionary reasoning improves our understanding of causes of resistance and possible countermeasures. It has also been promoted as a useful context for teaching natural selection, because its potency as a selection factor, in combination with the very short…

The flipped-classroom approach has gained increasing popularity and interest in engineering education. The purpose of this study was to investigate (a) student perspectives on the flipped-classroom approach in a transportation-engineering course and (b) how students used the in-class time dedicated to collaborative problem solving. To this end,…

Background: Presently, models of professional development aimed at supporting teachers' technology integration efforts are often short and decontextualized. With many schools across the country utilizing standards that require students to engage with digital tools, a situative model that supports building teachers' knowledge within their…

The purpose of this study was to assess and determine impacts of insufficient instructional materials and ineffective lesson delivery methods on teaching in biology higher education. The participants of this study were 60 trainees who graduated in Bachelor of Sciences from eight public universities in majoring biology. Data for the study was…

The main assumption of this study is that the natural environment is an important part of learning in out-of-school settings. We therefore aimed at understanding how outdoor educators (OEs) refer to, and use, the natural environment while guiding field trips, and how their use of the natural environment affects student learning outcomes. Using a…

Climate change encompasses a broad and complex set of concepts that is often challenging for students and educators. Using a learning progressions (LPs) knowledge system, we developed a LP that described student learning of climate change. In this exploratory study, we present findings from written assessments of climate change (n = 294) and…

The purpose of this study was to examine teacher reports and use of differentiation and to examine the use of technology in differentiated lessons. The researcher posed two questions: (a) What is the association between teacher reports of differentiation use and observed differentiation strategies used; and (b) How are teachers using the…