This article is about a year-long teaching and research project conducted with 696 4th graders (mostly 10-year olds) and their 36 teachers in Wyoming/USA. The researchers employed an action research approach. They planned and taught a two-day, Wyoming-themed, interdisciplinary unit, "We Are Wyoming", which integrated Social Studies,…

Educational robotics programs offer an engaging opportunity to potentially teach core computer science concepts and practices in K-12 classrooms. Here, we test the effects of units with different programming content within a virtual robotics context on both learning gains and motivational changes in middle school (6th-8th grade) robotics…

Inquiry-based lessons have been demonstrated to improve children's scientific thinking (i.e. reasoning abilities and domain-specific knowledge). Although empirical evidence shows that inquiry-based learning requires instruction, research comes from two approaches that have not been bridged yet: direct instruction of scientific reasoning and…

The quality assurance of teaching and learning as part of universities' governance and quality management has become a major subject in higher education and higher education politics worldwide. In addition, increasing academic attention has been paid to the quality assurance of teaching and learning, as is evident from the growing number of…

Researchers at AAAS and BSCS have developed a six-week unit that aims to help middle school students learn important chemistry ideas that can be used to explain growth and repair in animals and plants. By integrating core physical and life science ideas and engaging students in the science practices of modeling and constructing explanations, the…

To improve teaching in higher education, teachers in psychology are encouraged to use evidence-based teaching, that is, to apply empirical findings regarding learning and teaching, when designing learning opportunities. This report illustrates the combination of evidence-based teaching and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in teaching…

This report concerns the use of pre and post responses to an online questionnaire as evidence of knowledgeable learning by education students at a regional Australian university. Factor analysis was used to reveal conceptual changes in the students' thinking about classroom management across a unit of learning they had undertaken. These changes…

The "Problem-Study" framework is an approach to learning and lesson design in which the strategies and skills that make science a form of creative, critical, and analytical thinking are made explicit. This framework was used to design and analyze a place-based inquiry approach to learning about the environment with teachers and students using the…

This study investigated the extent to which teachers teach more effectively as a result of practice. Each of 12 experienced teachers taught a three-lesson social studies unit to three successive classes of eight junior high school students. The classes were taught on different days during one week. At the end of the unit each student completed a…

This paper discusses the history, development, and impact of the curriculum reform movement from 1950 to the present. It explores criticisms and accomplishments, outside influences, and the current possibilities of reform. Beginning with rumblings of dissatisfaction in the early fifties, the movement grew into a full reform of science education…

This unit deals with the concept of probability, the use of probability to make predictions, and procedures to gather and display probability data using graphs. Fractions are used to express probabilities. Instructional objectives for probability and for graphing (circle, bar, and line segment graphs) are contained in the booklet as well as…

Constructivism emphasizes the learner as an active meaning maker and problem solver. This article reviews constructivism's basic principles, analyzes implications for curriculum work, and explores a constructivist unit-development process. Planners must decide degree of curricular integration, establish unit parameters, identify the problem, draft…

The purpose of this unit is to develop basic concepts of measurement. The children will have a variety of experiences which make measurement concepts meaningful to them. This unit will provide some review of counting skills and simple addition and subtraction skills. The primary focus, however, is to build concepts of measurement in length, weight…

Describes a study unit on the Titius-Bode Law of planetary distances designed to be used in undergraduate astronomy courses. The format of the guide is based on a Piagetian learning cycle of exploration, conceptualization, and application. (HM)