Children and adolescents spend a large part of their day at school. Physical and mental problems result from physical inactivity, sitting positions at work and "indoor lifestyle" (WHO 2004). Therefore, health education is a major topic in school. Biology classes (scholastic) can make an important contribution in this context. Health as a…

The academic struggles of English language learners highlight the essential need to provide additional supports for this growing body of students. Given the multiple hurdles facing ELL students as they move through school, it is difficult for schools alone to provide ELL students the extra supports necessary for them to succeed academically.…

The purpose of the current research study was to compare the use of interactive instruction to direct instruction on the acquisition of personal finance skills for high school students. Participants were 45 high school seniors who were divided into a Traditional and an Interactive Instruction group. The 9-week research study measured the impact…

Flipping the classroom is a current pedagogical innovation in many schools and universities. Although interest in flipped classroom (or Inverted Classroom) continues to grow, its implementation so far has been driven more by teachers' intuitive beliefs, rather than empirically-based principles. Many studies merely replace in-class instructions…

This paper argues that, despite its difficulties, climate change can (and perhaps needs to) be taught rigorously to students by enquiry rather than through transmission and that such a method will enable students to make judgments on other issues of scientific controversy. It examines the issues and barriers to the teaching of climate change,…

Studies consistently show that Catholic schools produce positive impacts on educational outcomes. Many charter school networks in the United States now provide, what are essentially, secularized versions of the Catholic education model. However, charter schools cannot legally replicate the overt religious curriculum and mission of Catholic…

Shapedoku is a new type of puzzle that combines logic and spatial reasoning with understanding of basic geometric concepts such as slope, parallelism, perpendicularity, and properties of shapes. Shapedoku can be solved by individuals and, as demonstrated here, can form the basis of a review for geometry students as they create their own. In this…

Since the 1970s, a large body of research has reported on the differences between deep and surface approaches to student learning. More recently, however, this metaphor for students' approaches to learning has been applied to the practice of teaching. Studies at the university level have identified two approaches to teaching: the information…

What if you could challenge your 12th graders to understand car crashes in the context of physical forces, manufacturing challenges, government safety standards, and individual rights? With this volume in the "STEM Road Map Curriculum Series," you can! "Car Crashes" outlines a journey that will steer your students toward…

We assessed the impact of expert students' instructional quality on the academic performance of novice students in 12th-grade physics classes organized in an expert model of cooperative learning ("jigsaw classroom"). The instructional quality of 129 expert students was measured by a newly developed rating system. As expected, when…

Thermal cameras offer real-time visual access to otherwise invisible thermal phenomena, which are conceptually demanding for learners during traditional teaching. We present three studies of students' conduction of laboratory activities that employ thermal cameras to teach challenging thermal concepts in grades 4, 7 and 10-12. Visualization of…

The scarcity of trained man power in the field of science and technology has become a growing phenomenon today. Thus, we are still facing the same challenge country wide. With the multidimensional increase in the field of science and technology, there is a huge shortage of expert workforce in the field of STEM. The numbers of students who qualify…

Students' inaccurate ideas about what is represented by chemical equations and concepts underlying stoichiometry are well documented; however, there are few classroom-ready instructional solutions to help students build scientifically accurate ideas about these topics central to learning chemistry. An intervention (two inquiry-based activities)…

Offering an online integrated high-school course or subject for the first time involves many challenges. Better understanding the factors that affect students' willingness to participate in the experience could provide support for better implementation of such a strategic initiative. In addition, it is important to understand how personal factors…

English language learners are a diverse and fast-growing segment of the student population in the United States. Faced with the double challenge of keeping up with grade-level content while learning English as a new language in a new culture, many of them struggle. This article presents data from a three-phase qualitative study designed to learn…