Literature shows cooperative learning has positive benefits for students' learning and social outcomes. Even though cooperative learning studies have been conducted in all areas of the curriculum, few studies have investigated whether there are similar effects for students across several curriculum areas or age groups. Moreover, less attention has…

Authentic practice in pedagogical approaches is essential for preparing teachers to design effective learning experiences that foster student engagement during this digital era. There is an opportunity to explore novel and effective designs of virtual experiences that may augment or better prepare preservice teachers for field placements in…

This article reports the design of a scientific board game, named "Element Enterprise Tycoon" (EET), which creates a scenario combining chemical elements, techniques, and products in daily life. The game cards are designed to motivate students not only to retrieve information about chemical elements, but also to be proficient in…

Finding context, examples, and ample hands-on experimentation is fundamental for understanding complex ideas in subjects such as science and math. Recent popularity of competitive robotics has become a catalyst in the development of DIY and hobby kits. Manufacturers have made available easy to work, re-configurable, and functional, structural…

Multiple representations, such as experimental data, schemas, tables, and graphs, are an essential resource in science teaching. However, their use in the classroom typically poses a challenge for preservice teachers. The aim of this research is to examine changes in the practices of a group of preservice teachers regarding the use of multiple…

This paper presents an intervention aiming to promote students' learning by enhancing their interest in the concept of energy. Junior high school students' learning and interest is evaluated after engaging in activities on work and energy. The intervention integrated hands-on and simulated experiments included a structured series of guided…

Early adolescence marks a developmental period during which there is a window of opportunity to explicitly teach and make a significant difference in a young person's development of social and emotional competencies (SECs). All students can benefit from the inclusion of SECs and failing to develop such SECs can result in poor outcomes in several…

Past research has identified elements underlying modeling as a core science and engineering practice, as well as dimensions along which students' learn how to use models and how they perceive the nature of modeling. To extend these findings by a perspective on how modeling practice can be used in classrooms, we used design-based research to…

Teacher professional learning occurs across various contexts. Previous studies on teacher learning and changes in practice have focused on either classroom contexts or learning communities outside of school, but have rarely investigated teacher learning across multiple contexts. Investigating teacher learning across the double contexts of…

Digital video has become a dominant form of student learning in and beyond the classroom, and thus its pervasive nature in contemporary learning environments commands scholarly inquiry. In this paper we explore a participatory design-based research approach to the integration of video hook technology in the post-primary science classroom (students…

This paper examines whether teachers' prior professional development (PD) in Project-Based Learning (PBL) significantly related to teachers' enactments of PBL practices within the classroom. Teachers (N = 40) were recruited based on their commitment to enacting PBL in their classrooms. Teachers were surveyed regarding the extent to which they had…

Computational thinking is an essential skill in the modern global workforce. The current public health crisis has highlighted the need for students and educators to have a deeper understanding of epidemiology. While existing STEM curricula has addressed these topics in the past, current events present an opportunity for new curricula that can be…

Gifted students in regular classrooms have fewer opportunities to develop activities that are based on their characteristics as learners and address their needs; however, many of them spend most of their school time in these classrooms. The results presented here were part of a 2-year qualitative project that analyzed 12 Chilean gifted students'…

Research has shown that spatial ability plays a key role in understanding STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) content, including chemistry. Conservation of Matter (CoM) is an essential but challenging topic for chemistry students of all ages to grasp; it is often taught in a way where students memorize it but do not learn what…

This work presents the results of two-year-long pedagogical research, the aim of which was to demonstrate the applicability of the usage of a new strategy in education--Integrated e-Learning (INTe-L)--through its introduction into project-based physics teaching in Slovakia. The INTe-L strategy is built around the role of experiments and…