Background: Prior research suggests that the teaching of abstract concepts can be enhanced by the use of concrete examples, but there are few controlled studies. Objective: To replicate key findings from experiment one from Rawson et al. (2015). Method: Experiment participants studied definitions of abstract concepts from psychology, either with…

Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) hold significant promise for improving physics education research that uses machine learning. In this study, we compare the application of various models for conducting a large-scale analysis of written text grounded in a physics education research classification problem: identifying skills in…

Laboratory practical sessions are critical to scientific training in biology but usually fail to promote logical and hypothesis-driven reasoning and rely heavily on the teacher's instructions. This paper describes a 2-day laboratory practicum in which students prepare and analyze larval cuticle preparations of "Drosophila" segmentation…

The protection of earth's biodiversity requires a sophisticated understanding of how human activities can affect the relative abundances of species in natural ecological communities. Here, we report on an introductory biology laboratory activity in which students quantified biodiversity while investigating one of the most important controls on the…

A highly controlled laboratory experiment was conducted that suggested computer-based image training of rock classifications can provide a useful supplement to physical rock training. Two groups of participants learned to classify samples of 12 major types of rocks during a training phase. One group was trained using computer images of the rock…

This study concerns a framework for designing Teaching-Learning Sequences that aims to integrate the implementation of scientific practices in the context of daily problems. Said framework consists of three stages (formulation of the design principles, instructional design and design of the learning activities). It is based on four design…

Declarative concepts (i.e., key terms with short definitions of the abstract concepts denoted by those terms) are a common kind of information that students are expected to learn in many domains. A common pedagogical approach for supporting learning of declarative concepts involves presenting students with concrete examples that illustrate how the…

This study examines the extent to which instructions to self-explain vs. "other"-explain a text lead readers to produce different forms of explanations. Natural language processing was used to examine the content and characteristics of the explanations produced as a function of instruction condition. Undergraduate students (n = 146)…

The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office is pleased to present the 2021 Report on Course Section Offerings and Plans for Future Instruction for California Community Colleges. Pursuant to Senate Bill 129 (Skinner, 2021), California community college districts are required to report on the total number of course sections offered, broken…

Developing students' scientific literacy requires teachers to use a variety of pedagogical approaches including video as a form of instruction. In addition, using video is a way of engaging students in science ideas not otherwise accessible to them. This study investigated the merit of video clips representing scientific ideas in a secondary…

This study describes the possible variations of thought experiments in terms of their nature, purpose, and reasoning resources adopted during the solution of conceptual physics problems. A phenomenographic research approach was adopted for this study. Three groups of participants with varying levels of physics knowledge--low, medium, and high…

Creating inquiry activities is inherently difficult. Asking meaningful questions requires both background knowledge on the part of the students and complexity on the part of the phenomena. Yet numerous strategies can help teachers conduct inquiry activities. In this article, the authors share a taxonomy of teaching strategies used to create…

The purpose of the study was to update previous meta-analytic findings on the effectiveness of using similarities and differences as an instructional strategy. The strategy includes facilitating student comparison, classification, use of analogies, and use of metaphors. Previously, Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock reported a mean effect size of…

To evoke public emphasis on the professional skills training in vocational education, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan has recently focused on the certificate of information skills. However, the lack of a systematic and institutionally certified instructor training model within Taiwan not only varies the quality of certified instructors,…

It can reasonably be said that the discussion board is the "heart" of an online course. The discussion board can and should help the learner to make meaning of the content or topic and to find relevance to their lives. When this "engagement" does not occur, the individual does not benefit from the discussion, and it becomes…