Conversation and controversy surround the increasing focus on high-stakes standardized testing, whose effects may include less class time for science, narrower curricula, and shifts in instructional styles. In this paper, Judson finds that teachers in states with science accountability standards report at a significantly higher rate than teachers in other states that they spend four or more hours per week on science.
Through a study of 14 preschool classrooms serving low-income children from diverse ethnic backgrounds, the authors illustrate how carefully incorporating play-based learning into curricula can improve both literacy and social competence skills. The results illuminate how to more deeply engage learners with informal science education.
Novice teachers require support in learning to attend and respond to students’ thinking as expert teachers do. Video clubs in which groups of teachers respond to videos of one another’s classrooms can help. Van Es and Sherin describe how a video club helped teachers make space for student thinking to emerge, probe students’ understanding, and learn from their students while teaching.
The fact that inquiry-based science teaching has been defined in various ways makes claims about its effectiveness with students difficult to synthesize. In this meta-analysis, the authors generate a two-dimensional framework to analyze studies of the effectiveness of inquiry-based science instruction in improving student learning outcomes.
Lobato, Rhodehamel, and Hohensee investigated how learners “transferred” knowledge from one situation to another. They found that both individual cognition and the social organization of the class drove the learners’ process of selecting, interpreting, and working with particular features of mathematical information. They also found the social arrangements of the class influenced what pieces of information students noticed and focused on.
How do people respond to needing information about something as scary as climate change? Yang and Kahlor investigated the role of emotion when people seek new information or stop paying attention to information about climate change. People who were worried about climate change were likely to search out information, and people who were hopeful were not – probably because they didn’t want new information to change their beliefs.
Within learning environments kids talk can often be seen as disruptive or off task. However, Gutierrez et al reframe how teachers can engage kids talk and welcome diverse activities and linguistic practices to deepen learning and participation. This article explores how teachers allow students to offer local knowledge, reorganize activities, and make meaning that can connect to the official curriculum in unexpected ways.
This paper investigates the impact of stereotype threat on young women’s academic achievement in high school physics classes. Stereotype threat is the reinforcement of a negative stereotype. Results show that, although females underperformed when exposed to explicit and implicit stereotype threat conditions, their performance was identical to that of males when stereotypes were nullified.
This study examined the validity of the Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST), which is commonly used to capture students’ perceptions of scientists. Findings suggest that the DAST is not valid as a sole measurement. The originally identified stereotypical traits are no longer widely held by students.
Integrating technology with reformed-based science instruction that facilitates student inquiry can be challenging for teachers. Campbell, Longhurst, Wang, Hsu, and Coster propose a professional development model that helps teachers use the latest technologies to engage students in authentic science practices.
Why do some people move into science while others move away? Salehjee and Watts collected 12 personal biographies that provide rich descriptions of the different paths—direct or more wavering—that individuals follow. The implications of this study suggest that the informal science sector needs to “keep doors open” for individuals at transition points.
Recent years have brought a shift in the rhetoric of science communication from initial deficit models to practices involving dialogue and, finally, engagement. But to what extent has this rhetorical shift changed practice in the U.K.? Jensen and Holliman analysed practitioners’ views of their science communication practices. Findings indicate that science communication practice is still primarily deficit-based, with some incidence of dialogue-oriented thinking.