Overprompting science students using adjunct study questions

Overprompting students by providing them with strong hints to answers of questions can do learners more instructional harm than good. The selective attention model was used to explain the effects of overprompting students provided with study questions adjunct to a complex flow diagram describing scientific cyclical schema. Tenth-grade students were randomly assigned to an unprompted-question, no-question, prompted-question, and a placebo control group. Analysis showed that strongly prompting students to the answers of such questions was less effective than an unprompted question treatment, p < 0.05. The no-question treatment did not significantly outperform the prompted treatment. The information presented in the flow diagram was operationally related to comprehension study and posttest questions. The theoretical discussion and the present findings suggested that science teachers should use prompting techniques with extreme caution.     

The long-term effects of strategy-focussed writing instruction for grade six students

We compared 56 eighth-grade students who 28 months previously had received instruction in strategies for planning and revising their writing, with 21 students of similar academic ability from the same school who had not experienced the intervention. Both groups wrote an expository essay whilst logging their writing activities and completed writing metaknowledge and self-efficacy questionnaires. Students who had received the intervention showed a greater tendency to pre-plan (but not to revise) their texts, produced better quality and more reader-focused writing, and were more likely to show an awareness of the importance of text structure. These findings suggest persistent benefits for strategy-focused writing instruction.     

A promising science and literacy instructional model with Hispanic fifth grade students

Abstract

This study evaluated the Science and Literacy Instructional Model aimed at helping primarily Hispanic bilingual/English Learners (ELs) and economically disadvantaged fifth grade students with science achievement as measured by high-stakes standardized science achievement scores. The model combined purposeful planning, innovative academic vocabulary instruction, and a Lesson Design Lab. Difference-in proportions tests were used to determine if students at two school campuses showed positive achievement gains on a state science test. This study found statistically significant results with medium to large effect sizes at both campuses. Findings contribute to much needed research, practice, and policy in the area of effective models to assist both teachers and students in an era of high-stakes testing.     

Automatic evaluation of open-ended questions for online learning. A systematic mapping

The assessment of students’ performances in Higher Education is one of the essential components of teaching activities. Open-ended tasks allow a more in-depth assessment of students’ learning levels, but their evaluation and grading are time-consuming and prone to subjective bias. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, most traditional Higher Education courses converted to online courses; automatic grading and feedback tools and methods (AGFTM) have become critical components of online learning systems, especially with regards to short answers and essays assessment. This work frames the recent advancement in AGFTM through a systematic mapping of the research field and a literature review. This analysis gives an overview of the trends, specific goals, methods, quality of proposals, challenges and limitations in this research area. The results indicate that it is a growing research area, with a large set of techniques involved, but still not mature, where practical implementations have yet to come.     

A comparison of concrete and formal science instruction upon science achievement and reasoning ability of sixth grade students

Several recent studies suggest concrete learners make greater gains in student achievement and in cognitive development when receiving concrete instruction than when receiving formal instruction. This study examined the effect of concrete and formal instruction upon reasoning and science achievement of sixth grade students. Four intact classes of sixth grade students were randomly selected into two treatment groups; concrete and formal. The treatments were patterned after the operational definitions published by Schneider and Renner (1980). Pretest and posttest measures were taken on the two dependent variables; reasoning, measured with Lawson's Classroom Test of Formal Reasoning, and science achievement, measured with seven teacher made tests covering the following units in a sixth grade general science curriculum: Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, Cells, Plants, Animals, and Ecology. Analysis of covariance indicated significantly higher levels (better than 0.05 and in some cases 0.01) of performance in science achievement and cognitive development favoring the concrete instruction group and a significant gender effect favoring males.     

数学开放题的教育功能和特征

开放题有利于培养学生的表述能力和批判、评价能力，有利于培养学生对于所学知识的应用能力，它直接关系到学生的数学观及其在数学学习中的态度和信念。了解并利用开放题的教育特征和教育功能，对提升学生数学素养和人精神以及培养学生的创新意识和能力有极其重要的作用。     

Changes in perceptions of science for third,seventh, and eleventh grade students

Similar results from four studies dealing with third, seventh, and eleventh grade students and their views of science teachers, science classes, usefulness of science study, and what it is like to be a scientist are reviewed and analyzed. The studies include the affective data from the 1977 NAEP report, the 1982 NAEP information, an Iowa follow-up study, and a study limited to one large school district. The analysis permits a synthesis of information on the failures of school science to affect student perceptions positively. Relatively few areas are identified which illustrate positive effects of science programs on students. Primary problems identified are: (1) science is less fun and exciting the longer students stay in school; (2) teachers are viewed as providers of information; the more preparation a teacher has and the more advanced the class, the less likely is a teacher ever to admit not knowing; (3) students do not feel more successful and/or more curious as they progress through a science program; (4) the school program does not provide increasingly accurate information and/or encouragement for science career choices.     

Understanding the concepts of proportion and ratio constructed by two grade six students

The purpose of this study was to construct an understanding of two grade six students' proportional reasoning schemes. The data from the clinical interviews gives insight as to the importance of multiplicative thinking in proportional reasoning. Two mental operations, unitizing and iterating play an important role in student's use of multiplicative thinking in proportion tasks. Unitizing a composite unit and iterating it to its referent point enables one to preserve the invariance of a ratio. Proportions involved the coordination of two number sequences, keeping the ratio unit invariant under the iteration. In the iteration process, one needed to explicitly conceptualize the iteration action of the composite ratio unit to make sense of ratio problems and to have sufficient understanding of the meaning of multiplication and division and its relevance in the iteration process. One needed to have constructed multiplicative structures and iteration schemes in order to reason proportionally. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Actions for sociopolitical consciousness in a high school science class: A case study of ninth grade class with predominantly indigenous students

This case study explores how a group of Grade 9 students engaged in sociopolitical discourses and actions in a science class in a mostly indigenous student school in Nepal. The study used sociopolitical consciousness (SPC) as a framework to document and understand indigenous students’ SPC-oriented science interactions and subsequent social change actions. We used ethnographic methods of data collection over 6 months. The study focused on the actions of 4 girls and 2 boys belonging to the indigenous Tharu group. Data were analyzed using iterative qualitative methods. The study findings show that students are capable of engaging in critical thinking, critical reflecting, and taking actions for social change. Additionally, students are competent to link their experiences with social, structural, and political discrimination to the relevant science content they learn. The study presents four thematic findings related to SPC and science teaching and learning: Fostering social justice awareness in science class, fostering structural understanding of inequities in sickle cell disease, fostering sociopolitical actions for sickle cell disease, and the teacher's activist pedagogy for SPC in science learning. Implications of the study are that culturally relevant pedagogy helps indigenous students to become sociopolitically more aware of the links between science and social change. Adding aspects of critical pedagogies in science teaching could encourage students to become more sociopolitically reflective about science learning.     

Turkish grade 10 students' and science teachers' conceptions of nature of science: A national study

This study aimed to assess grade 10 Turkish students' and science teachers' conceptions of nature of science (NOS) and whether these conceptions were related to selected variables. These variables included participants' gender, geographical region, and the socioeconomic status (SES) of their city and region; teacher disciplinary background, years of teaching experience, graduate degree, and type of teacher training program; and student household SES and parents' educational level. A stratified sampling approach was used to generate a representative national sample comprising 2,087 students and 378 science teachers. After establishing their validity in the Turkish context, participants were administered a questionnaire comprising 14 modified “Views on Science‐Technology‐Society” (VOSTS) items to assess their views of certain aspects of NOS. A total of 2,020 students (97%) and 362 teachers (96%) completed the questionnaire. Participant responses were categorized as “naïve,” “have merit,” or “informed,” and the frequency distributions for these responses were compared for various groupings of participants. The majority of participants held naïve views of a majority of the target NOS aspects. Teacher views were mostly similar to those of their students. Teacher and student views of some NOS aspects were related to some of the target variables. These included teacher graduate degree and geographical region, and student household SES, parent education, and SES of their city and geographical region. The relationship between student NOS views and enhanced economic and educational capitals of their households, as well as the SES status of their cities and geographical regions point to significant cultural (specifically Western) and intellectual underpinnings of understandings about NOS. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 1083–1112, 2008     

Exploring students' responses to conceptual questions when engaged with planned writing experiences: A study with year 10 science students

Whereas there has been strong advocacy of the value of writing for learning in science, the role of student planning in this approach and the relationships between planning, writing, and learning have been underresearched. Our mixed method study aimed to address this issue by seeking to identify quantitative differences in learning outcomes between two groups of students exposed to varying degrees of planning activities in writing‐to‐learn experiences. We also identified differences in learning outcomes between a group of students with two writing experiences and a group with one writing experience. Results indicate that students with planned writing activities did not score significantly better on conceptual questions as a group than students who had delayed planning experiences. Students with two writing experiences as opposed to one also scored significantly better as a group on answering conceptual questions both immediately after the writing experience and on a test 8 weeks after the unit. The difference in writing treatment initially significantly affected males compared with females but this effect disappeared with further opportunities to write. Students' comments provide support for using nontraditional writing tasks as a means to assist learning, particularly when the focus is on an audience different from the teacher. In reporting on different learning outcomes for the two groups, we consider various implications including identification of some key conditions for student writing to serve learning. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 186–210, 2004     

Influence of resequencing general science content on the science achievement,attitudes toward science,and interest in science of sixth grade students

This study was designed to determine the influence of resequencing general science content on sixth grade students' science achievement, attitudes toward science, and interest in science. Resequencing content was accomplished for experimental group students through revising the order of textbook chapters in a general science course, in order to clarify content structure and establish interrelationships among major concepts. The subjects were 203 sixth grade learners randomly assigned to the two treatment groups of resequenced content and nonresequenced content. The findings revealed that students for whom content structure was clarified through resequencing general science chapters exhibited significantly higher science achievement, significantly more positive attitudes toward science, and significantly greater interest in science than students for whom general science content was not resequenced.     

Exploring relationships among four science teaching-learning affective attributes of sixth grade students

The intent of this study was to investigate possible relationships among the constructs of attitudes toward science, interest in science, science curiosity, and self-concept of science ability. Data were collected from 228 sixth-grade students by way of four Likert-type instruments, each of which measured a given attribute. Statistical procedures included univariate and multivariate analysis of variance, product-moment correlations, canonical correlations, multiple regression analysis, and factor analysis. The results indicated that attitudes toward science, interest in science, and science curiosity are highly related. Implications for classroom science teaching and suggestions for future research have also been discussed.     

A multiplicative reasoning assessment for fourth and fifth grade students

Multiplicative reasoning is critical for the development of more advanced mathematical concepts such as fractions and algebra, and therefore is a critical process for teachers and researchers to assess in an effective and efficient manner. Unfortunately, the vast majority of available assessments examine students’ skill with algorithms or memorized facts, with no necessary connection to students’ conceptual understanding of the content. This study reports on the continued development and validation of the Multiplicative Reasoning Assessment (MRA) for elementary grades. Data from 196 fourth and fifth grade students was examined using a Rasch modeling approach. Supplemental data from follow-up clinical interviews was also collected and analyzed. Results provide evidence for the reliability and validity of the MRA. Specifically, findings suggest the assessment adequately assesses students’ multiplicative reasoning, as an alternative to assessments of fact memorization or procedural fluency.     

Effects of study intention and generating multiple choice questions on expository text retention

Teachers often recommend their students to generate test questions and answers as a means of preparing for an exam. There is a paucity of research on the effects of this instructional strategy. Two recent studies showed positive effects of generating test questions relative to restudy, but these studies did not control for time on task. Moreover, the scarce research available has been limited to the effects of generating open-ended questions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate whether generating multiple-choice test questions would foster retention (as measured by a multiple-choice test) relative to restudy when time would be kept constant across conditions. Using a 2 × 2 design, university students (N = 143) studied a text with the intention of either generating test items or performing well on a test, and then either generated multiple-choice items or restudied the text. Retention was measured by means of a multiple-choice test, both immediately after learning and after a one-week delay. Results showed no effects of study intention. Generating multiple-choice items resulted in lower test performance than restudying the text for the same amount of time.     

Reasoning from data: How students collect and interpret data in science investigations

This study explored the understandings of data and measurement that school students draw upon, and the ways that they reason from data, when carrying out a practical science inquiry task. The two practical tasks used in the study each involved investigations of the relationships between two independent variables (IVs) and a dependent variable (DV); in both tasks, one IV covaried with the DV, whereas the other did not. Each was undertaken by 10 students, aged 10, 12, and 14 years (total n = 60 students), working individually. Their actions were video‐recorded for analysis. In a subsequent interview, each student was asked to discuss and interpret data collected by two other students, undertaking a similar (but different) practical task, shown on a video‐recording. An analysis of the sample students' performance on the practical tasks and their interview responses showed few differences across task contexts, or with age, in students' reasoning, but significant differences in performance when investigating situations of covariation and non‐covariation. Few students in the sample displayed sufficient understanding of measurement error to deal effectively with the latter. Investigations of non‐covariation cases revealed, much more clearly than investigations of covariation cases, the students' ideas about data and measurement, and their ways of reasoning from data. Such investigations therefore provide particularly valuable contexts for teaching and research. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 748–769, 2004     

The relative responsiveness of concrete operational seventh grade and college students to science instruction

Numerous persons have suggested that instruction should match the developmental level of the learner. Are “concrete operational” college students developmentally the same as “concrete operational” seventh grade students thus in need of identical instruction? Matched concrete operational seventh grade and college students were given identical classroom instruction in probabilistic and correlational reasoning. The college students performed significantly better on posttest measures which appeared to require greater processing of information while significant differences did not exist on less difficult items. Level of cognitive development, field independence, and fluid intelligence correlated moderately with posttest performance for the seventh grade students. Field independence and fluid intelligence correlated moderately with posttest performance for the college students but not pretest knowledge of specific biological concepts and cognitive level. It was concluded that college students are more responsive to instruction due either to (1) greater amount of experience or (2) greater information processing capacity. Implications for science teaching are discussed.