Annotated, integrated, illustrated practical instructions result in higher levels of performance on task; lower completion time, task difficulty, and perceived cognitive load; higher relative efficiency score and post-test scores than the conventional instructions; and makes practical work instructions easier to understand for students with no prior knowledge of the subject matter.
This study presents an interesting cross-national analysis of young people’s preferences, expectations, and perceptions of ability regarding STEM subjects. It finds that gender plays a significant role in students’ choices regarding STEM study and careers on the basis of comparison of students from four countries using the data from PISA, the international cross-comparison study. This study provides ISE educators with an insight into young people’s thinking regarding STEM. It also suggests possible strategies that may be implemented by ISE initiatives for greater gender equity in STEM.
This study is of value in guiding ISE professionals’ thinking on the usefulness of inquiry-based instruction, especially in a climate of accountability and evidence-based reform. Students in the inquiry-based group perform better than the students receiving commonplace instruction, on each of the knowledge, scientific reasoning, and argumentation measures.
Researchers found that students developed greater levels of what they call scientific abilities when provided opportunities to design, refine, and reflect on science experiments during a laboratory course, as compared with students who conducted more traditional labs involving following directions in already established experimental designs. This article will interest informal educators seeking to provide students with opportunities to create, make, invent, and lead their own scientific investigations.
This paper describes a study designed to investigate whether fiction can help students to develop their opinions on socio-scientific issues. The findings suggest that fictional accounts can be effective, but the study did not investigate the quality of the reasoning underlying the opinions, nor their longevity.
In this study, the authors describe a conceptual framework addressing culturally based ways of knowing, and provide a brief description of their efforts to design a community-based summer science program with a Native American tribe using this framework. To address the call to attract culturally diverse students to STEM fields, the authors advocate supporting students in their navigation of multiple and perhaps conflicting epistemologies, and using the student community as resources to be built upon, rather than pushing them toward replacing their personal epistemologies with canonical
This study presents a disappointing account of Spanish secondary school students’ knowledge and understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change. Many of the key factors responsible for climate change are not recognized, whilst significant socioeconomic consequences of climate change, for example, increasing migration and food shortages, are rarely acknowledged.
This paper examines students' perspectives on a science enrichment programme led by a university-based science outreach initiative. Few studies have previously examined the impact of such experiences from the student perspective. Findings suggest carefully designed out-of-school inquiry programmes broaden students' experiences of science, particularly for those from under-resourced schools. The paper includes a checklist of conditions for success for out-of-school inquiry programmes which may be of interest to ISE educators.
The authors argue that to address the lack of student interest in STEM careers, educators need to better understand the career choice and the decision-making processes of students. To better understand student decision-making, the authors interviewed 13 high school students and identified four types of conversation (formative, performative, consequent, and potential) regarding science-related professions. These four ways of talking can inform educators about ways to share information about science careers.
This research reports on the results of two studies which found that mathematically talented students who had had greater exposure to accelerated, enriched, and individualized STEM learning opportunities achieved more significant STEM accomplishments later in life than their matched counterparts. Notable accomplishments were designated as achieving STEM careers, STEM PhDs, STEM tenure, STEM publications, and STEM patents. The researchers found this relationship to hold true even when controlling for high levels of motivation. Furthermore, the research found that experiences that were more
The purpose of the study was to investigate how situational interest was triggered for high-school students on an aquarium field trip. Although actual learning was not itself measured in this study, the author investigates how the museum setting triggers interest, which in turn influences learning and is therefore important to cultivate. As the author admits, some of the findings are intuitive but the study empirically confirms some approaches, which can spark situational interest. Five areas that triggered situational interest were identified through student interviews: social involvement
This article provides a review of the research literature concerning scientific argumentation in the K-12 classroom. The researcher argues that not all forms of argumentation promote an understanding of scientific practice, and therefore not all support scientific literacy. This paper identifies three main approaches to lessons that aim to introduce students to scientific argumentation: (1) immersion, (2) structure, and (3) socioscientific. The research draws on the work of Ford (2008) and others to find that immersion strategies – lessons in which argumentation is integrated into the