The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the influence of participating in a STEM Academy (STEMA) on girls' mathematics, science, engineering, and technology self-efficacy and STEM attitudes. Twenty-eight sixth grade girls participating in a STEMA were individually matched with sixth grade girls not participating in a STEMA. Both…

This study examined how 465 socioeconomically disadvantaged middle school students used a multimedia-enriched problem-based learning (PBL) program. Using a mixed-methods design, we investigated the impact of PBL on students' performance, and relationship among students' self-efficacy, attitude toward science, and performance. The findings showed…

The research partnership among university faculty, information technology graduate students, and science content experts from school districts developed the Web-based two-dimensional and three-dimensional virtual reality science games. The games were implemented to engage middle school students in learning, retaining, and applying newly acquired…

This mixed-methods study examined the relationship between middle level science students' perceptions of teacher-student interactions and students' science motivation, particulary their efficacy, value, and goal orientation for learning science. In this sequential explanatory design, quantitative and qualitative data were collected in two phases,…

Effective and sustainable science education is enriched by the use of visuals, auditory, and tactile experiences. In order to provide effective learning, instruction needs to include multimodal approaches. Integrating ICT supported narrations into learning environments may provide effective and sustainable learning methods. Investigated in this…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between constructivist learning environment and students'motivation to learn science by testing whether students' self-efficacy in learning science, intrinsically and extrinsically motivated science learning increase and students' anxiety about science assessment decreases when more…

In this participatory action research study, we answered the question, How can we improve attitudes toward science education of the African American girls at an elementary school? Girls in grades 3-6 completed the Modified Attitudes toward Science Inventory. A purposeful sample of 30 girls participated in several focus-group interviews throughout…

Little research has examined whether the effects of race or socioeconomic status (SES) on educational attitudes differ by gender, limiting knowledge of unique vulnerabilities occurring at the intersection of multiple social statuses. Using data from 182 sixth-graders, interactions between gender, race/ethnicity, and SES in predicting educational…

This study examined the effect of a computer-enhanced problem-based learning (PBL) environment on middle school students' learning, investigating the relationship among students' self-efficacy, attitude toward science, and achievement. As Bandura defined it (1986), self-efficacy refers to the beliefs people have about whether or not they can…

This study was carried out to determine the effect of Scratch-based coding applications integrated into the 5E learning model used in science teaching on students' computational thinking skills and self-efficacy towards block-based programming. In addition, students' perceptions of the activity were measured after each Scratch activity, which was…

Most studies have concentrated in assessing students' overall attitudes towards science, mathematics, and engineering/technology or the attitude towards individual STEM domain. The present research aims to explore primary students' gender and grade differences of their STEM domain-specific attitudes including self-efficacy and expectancy-value…

Physics subjects or topics as a part of science education enable students to explore nature and natural events by using physics laws and scientific methods. In the lower-secondary school, physics is a subfield within the science curriculum developed holistically with the broad field curriculum design unlike the subject-centred curriculum in the…

This is a mix methods follow-up study in which we reconfirm the findings from an earlier study [Vedder-Weiss & Fortus [2011] "Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(2)", 199-216]. The findings indicate that adolescents' declining motivation to learn science, which was found in many previous studies [Galton [2009] "Moving to…

Toward the end of 6th grade, some bright and highly motivated science-oriented Israeli students and their parents are required to make a decision: whether or not to enrol in a non-mandatory advanced science programme for 7th graders ([almost equal to] 12 year olds) upon entering middle-school. In other words, for many students, entry into the STEM…

The study examined students' perceptions related to emotional and cognitive engagement of linguistic and diagrammatic representational practices in science learning. Altogether, 251 Japanese sixth-grade (11-12 years old) and 187 ninth-grade students (14-15 years old) participated. The students' recognitions were measured by a self-report…