Climate change is a contemporary global crisis that necessitates pedagogical innovation for the middle school dance classroom. This article describes an integrated design for a dance and science unit. Building on students' kinesthetic abilities, teachers are able to create a unit comprising a series of lessons on bird migrations effected by…

Breadth and depth of curriculum are important for success in science teaching and learning. Curriculum theorists recommend less breadth and more depth than overloaded, superficial science curricula. This study investigates breadth and depth in the official biology syllabi in the seventh to eighth or ninth years in four diverse jurisdictions,…

Background: Dialogue between the teaching profession and researchers regarding pedagogical strategy is sometimes problematic. Pedagogy research may benefit from incorporating research methods that can investigate teachers' and pupils' interpretations. Purpose: This research expands the Pedagogy Analysis Framework (Riordan, 2020) by explaining in…

Background/purpose: This study aimed to identify the impact of teaching science based on John Zahorek's model on the acquisition of scientific concepts among seventh-grade female students. Materials/methods. It was based on the quasi-experimental method. The study participants, comprising 58 seventh-grade students, were intentionally selected from…

Virtual classrooms based on the metaverse or virtual reality are useful and effective for imparting basic chemistry concepts. Interactive and immersive environments can effectively teach fundamental chemistry concepts, such as chemical bonding and formulas, thereby making these otherwise abstract and intangible ideas more accessible and…

Literacy skills are essential if students are to access knowledge and achieve academic success in middle school science. A key difficulty with interpreting literacy practices in any discipline is the problem of conceptualising what constitutes literacy. Our study contributes new understandings to the discipline of science where there are ongoing…

STEM pedagogy is a popular area for research and discussion. The empirical literature on this topic supports a variety of approaches (e.g., inquiry-based) to help instructors spark student interest create an effective learning environment, and foster long-term retention and transfer of information related to STEM topics. One potential approach is…

This study examined the effect of design-based science instruction (DBSI) on sixth grade students' science achievement, as well as their development in relation to science process skills. 213 sixth grade students from three public schools participated in the study. A pilot was conducted in the unit of Systems of the Human Body and the main study…

In introductory electric circuits in middle school, students often carry strongly held alternative conceptions. Common to many of these is an idea of electric current as some kind of substance that originates from the battery and moves toward electronic components. Learners often argue that current influences those one by one as they are…

Despite broad consensus on the value of classroom dialog for promoting scientific argumentation, tensions have emerged in the literature regarding the degree to which teachers should guide the dialogic process (dialogic stance). We use the lens of responsive teaching to examine how one teacher adjusts his instruction to foster dialog in three…

This study investigates the types of instruction multilingual learners (MLs) experience in the general education classroom in upper-elementary school. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (ECLS-K) we examine the types of instructional practices MLs experienced in reading, math, and science in fourth and…

This multiple case study describes error-reaction patterns (ERPs) in middle school science lessons. Twenty-seven science teachers' reactions to student errors were explored in terms of four aspects of classroom discourse: talk move, discursive purpose, communicative approach, and patterns of interaction. Two hundred ninety-six error-reaction…

The 2019 science results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 8th-grade students, especially economically challenged and emergent bilingual students, made few gains in science and reading achievement. Researchers have found that scientific language may be a significant barrier to student comprehension. Researchers have…

The research examined the effect of context-based comics on the grounded mental model (GMM) development of sixth-grade students. Fifty-nine students were included in the study, which was conducted with a quasi-experimental design. A context-based comic (CbC) was used to teach the experimental group, whereas the course was taught using existing…

Taking the "practice turn" in K-12 science classrooms requires students to engage in processes of knowledge building, constructing explanatory accounts of natural phenomena. To support students in these sensemaking opportunities, a significant departure is needed from how science is typically taught in many classrooms. Teachers will need…