Assessing students’ learning about fundamental concepts of climate change under two different conditions

Students from three different British Columbia grade six classes were followed through two weeks of instruction on climate change. Pre, post, and follow-up surveys were used to determine the differences in knowledge gained and retained by students that received direct instruction from their science teacher, and by those who received equivalent content instruction from outside presenters. The teacher participant also completed a survey on her experience with the researcher-designed lesson plans. Students’ results on the surveys were compared to results from a control group with no intervention. The teacher-based setting resulted in significantly higher knowledge gain, although no difference was found between the groups’ rate of knowledge decline thereafter. Highest gains in knowledge were for the carbon cycle and the human impacts topic, followed by understanding the difference between climate and weather. The students and teacher alike appeared to struggle with the topic of global warming and the greenhouse effect. The research suggests that with the appropriate background information the classroom teacher is likely to be more effective at conveying the science of climate change, particularly when it is taught through an understanding of the carbon cycle and its human impacts. It also suggests that those non-governmental organizations engaged in climate change education might be better served by investing their limited resources in the development of learning materials and subsequent professional development for teachers rather than focusing on in-school presentations.     

Facilitating conceptual change in ninth grade students’ understanding of human circulatory system concepts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the conceptual change text oriented instruction over traditionally designed instruction on ninth grade students’ understanding of the human circulatory system concepts, and their retention of this understanding. The subjects of this study consist of 73 ninth grade female students from two classes of a basic school in Jordan. One of the classes was randomly assigned as an experimental group in which conceptual change text oriented instruction was implemented, and the other class was randomly assigned as a control group in which students were instructed by traditionally designed biology instruction. Results showed that students exposed to conceptual change oriented instruction had better understanding of the human circulatory system concepts than those exposed to traditional instruction. The results also showed that the conceptual change text oriented instruction was significantly better than the traditional instruction in retention of this understanding.     

Effects of jigsaw and animation techniques on students’ understanding of concepts and subjects in electrochemistry

This study investigated the effect of jigsaw cooperative learning and animation versus traditional teaching methods on students’ understanding of electrochemistry in a first-year general chemistry course. This study was carried out in three different classes in the department of primary science education during the 2007–2008 academic year. The first class was randomly assigned as the jigsaw group, the second as the animation group, and the third as the control group. Students participating in the jigsaw group were divided into five “home groups” since the topic electrochemistry is divided into five subtopics. Each of these home groups contained four students. The groups were as follows: (1) Home Group A (HGA), representing the fundamental concepts of electrochemistry, (2) Home Group B (HGB), representing the electrochemical cell and energy source, (3) Home Group C (HGC), representing electrolysis, (4) Home Group D (HGD), representing Faraday’s laws, and (5) Home Group E (HGE), representing corrosion. The home groups broke apart, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and the students moved into jigsaw groups consisting of members from the other home groups, who were each assigned a subtopic. For students in the animation group, their lesson focused on explaining the step-by-step process of electrochemistry through a computer-animated presentation. The main data collection tools were the Test of Scientific Reasoning and the Particulate Nature of Matter Evaluation Test. The results indicated that the jigsaw and animation groups achieved better results than the control group.     

A mistake based approach probing students’ understanding of PV-type work in thermodynamics

There are several concepts in molecular thermodynamics which easily befuddle students. PV-type work done, presents one such example. Classifying the systematic mistakes made by students in response to a concept-based question on work done in thermodynamics, and sharing them across a public forum results in a paradigm of learning called the ‘mistake based approach’. This approach is a subset of a popular genre in science education known as ‘student conception studies’. It extends beyond thermodynamics itself, is particularly amenable to undergraduate education and applies to multiple disciplines of science and beyond.     

The importance of socio-cultural context for understanding students’ meaning making in the study of genetics

In this rejoinder to Ann Kindfield and Grady Venville’s comments on our article “Reconsidering conceptual change from a socio-cultural perspective: Analyzing students’ meaning making in genetics in collaborative learning activities,” we elaborate on some of the critical issues they raise. Their comments make apparent some of the crucial differences between a socio-cultural and a socio-cognitive approach towards conceptual change. We have selected some issues that are addressed, either implicitly or explicitly, in their comments. The main issues discussed are talk and interaction as data, the significance of context in interaction studies, the feasibility of generic claims in small-scale interaction studies, and the difference between studying students’ understanding of science concepts as opposed to studying the construction of meaning.

Middle school students’ learning of mechanics concepts through engagement in different sequences of physical and virtual experiments

ABSTRACT

Physical and virtual experimentation are thought to have different affordances for supporting students’ learning. Research investigating the use of physical and virtual experiments to support students’ learning has identified a variety of, sometimes conflicting, outcomes. Unanswered questions remain about how physical and virtual experiments may impact students’ learning and for which contexts and content areas they may be most effective. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined eighth grade students’ (N?=?100) learning of physics concepts related to pulleys depending on the sequence of physical and virtual labs they engaged in. Five classes of students were assigned to either the: physical first condition (PF) (n?=?55), where students performed a physical pulley experiment and then performed the same experiment virtually, or virtual first condition (VF) (n?=?45), with the opposite sequence. Repeated measures ANOVA’s were conducted to examine how physical and virtual labs impacted students’ learning of specific physics concepts. While we did not find clear-cut support that one sequence was better, we did find evidence that participating in virtual experiments may be more beneficial for learning certain physics concepts, such as work and mechanical advantage. Our findings support the idea that if time or physical materials are limited, using virtual experiments may help students understand work and mechanical advantage.     

How lecturers’ understanding of change is embedded in disciplinary practices: a multiple case study

In the literature, higher education teaching is typically conceptualised as generic or determined by disciplinary characteristics. Academic development literature mirrors this dichotomy when discussing the starting point for development work. However, this focus on universal characteristics overlooks crucial aspects of contextual influence on teaching and of lecturers’ derived willingness to change their teaching. This article contributes to the existing literature by illustrating how understanding of and willingness to change is a part of a disciplinary practice. The analysis demonstrates how disciplinary dispositions create frames of meaning in which the understanding of change is embedded. Further, it is argued that academic development has a greater chance of succeeding if it aims at the working-group level, challenges the discipline values and takes an outsider perspective.     

A qualitative study of secondary-school students’ perceptions of interpersonal teacher behaviour in Hong Kong

Learning Environments Research - This qualitative study explored Hong Kong students’ views and reactive emotions towards interpersonal teacher behaviour in their classrooms. Fifteen...     

A comparison of students’ reflective thinking across different years in a problem-based learning environment

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a constructivist approach to learning which is believed to promote reflective thinking in students. This study investigated how students in one particular institution developed in their reflective thinking habits—Habitual Action, Understanding, Reflection, and Critical Reflection—as they went through the daily practice of PBL. A 16-item questionnaire measuring the four levels of reflective thinking habits was administered to four cohorts of students: an incoming cohort, first-years, second-years, and third-years. First-year students rated themselves higher on Reflection and Critical Reflection, while third-years reported the highest levels of Habitual Action. Discriminatory and scatterplot analysis on the third year cohort revealed that while a proportion of students (47%) reported higher levels of Habitual Action with lower levels of Reflection, there was a small subgroup who also reported higher levels of both Habitual Action and Reflection. Overall, the results showed that PBL does promote the development of reflective thinking, particularly for first-year students, but that this development is not sustained consistently after that. This pointed to other possible factors that could hinder students’ development of reflective thinking in PBL.     

Violence in urban schools: school professionals’ categorizations and explanations of violence among students in two different demographic areas

The present study explores how officials in Swedish secondary schools define and categorize situations in which students have been exposed to violence in the school. The study is designed as a case study of two secondary schools, situated in two demographically different urban neighbourhoods. The results indicate that different socio-economic conditions influence how professionals categorize and explain violence, but also what strategies are used to deal with different incidents. In the socially disadvantaged area, there is closer collaboration with the police, and filing police reports is more common. In the school located in a middle-class area, professionals handle similar situations by collaborating with parents and using diagnoses as the main explanation for students’ problematic behaviour.     

A phenomenographic study of lecturers’ conceptions of using learning technology in a Pakistani context

While there are many studies exploring the phenomenon of lecturers’ use of learning technology within teaching practices in western higher education contexts, currently we know little about this phenomenon within less developed countries. In the paper, we discuss the findings from a phenomenographic study of lecturers’ conceptions of using learning technology in a Pakistani university context. We describe how lecturers’ use of learning technology is underpinned by their pedagogical understanding. Furthermore, we show that prevailing contextual socio-economic and technological limitations affect lecturers’ daily pedagogical practices and use of learning technology. The results of the study demonstrate the importance and influence of lecturers’ pedagogical understandings and of contextual limitations within daily teaching practices on their experiences of using learning technology. The findings have wider implications for our understanding of the variation in ways learning technology is understood and used within pedagogical practice in other developing and more developed contexts.     

A Study in Self‐assessment: tutor and students’ perceptions of performance criteria

This paper reports a study which implemented and evaluated a method of student self‐assessment. The theme of the importance of marking criteria (Orsmond et al., 1996) is developed. Pairs of first‐year undergraduate biology students were asked to complete a poster assignment on a specific aspect of nerve physiology. The study was designed to allow the evaluation of (1) student self and tutor marking for individual marking criteria; and (2) student vs student marking of their poster work for individual marking criteria. A comparison between the tutor and the student self‐assessed mark reveals how important it is to consider the individual marking criteria rather than the overall mark. These results support our findings on peer assessment reported earlier (Orsmond et al., 1996). The results also illustrate the potential pitfalls that exist when making assumptions about the degree of student/student interaction and students’ marking ability. This study supports previous work which showed that self‐assessment is extremely useful in helping students reach their learning goals, i.e. it is a strong formative educational tool and can be used in order to bring about behavioural changes in students with regard to their own learning processes.     

A study of students’ reasoning about probabilistic causality: Implications for understanding complex systems and for instructional design

Understanding complex systems requires reasoning about causal relationships that behave or appear to behave probabilistically. Features such as distributed agency, large spatial scales, and time delays obscure co-variation relationships and complex interactions can result in non-deterministic relationships between causes and effects that are best understood statistically. Causal Bayesian Research (e.g. Gopnik and Schulz in Causal learning: psychology, philosophy, and computation, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007) suggests that summing across probabilistic instances is inherent to human causal induction, yet other research (e.g. Schulz and Sommerville in Child Development 77(2):427–442, 2006) suggests a human tendency to assume deterministic relationships. Classroom science learning often stresses the replicability of outcomes, putting this learning in tension with understanding probabilistic patterns in complex systems. This investigation examined students’ reasoning patterns on tasks with probabilistic causal features. Microgenetic studies were conducted in multiple sessions over a school year with students in kindergarten, second, fourth and sixth grades (n = 16) to assess their assumptions when dealing with tasks from four domains: social; games; machines; and biology. Later sessions attempted to scaffold students’ understanding using connection making and analogical reasoning. This paper reports on the overall patterns and trends in the data. Most students held a deterministic stance at the outset; however, at least one student at each grade level reasoned probabilistically from the start. All students except one eventually revealed at least one topic for which they held a primarily probabilistic stance. The results have implications for how students reason about complex systems and for how patterns of co-variation and evidence in science are discussed.     

The challenges of instructors’ and students’ attitudes in digital transformation: A case study of Saudi Universities

Education and Information Technologies - Digital Transformation (DT) has become the core motivator for almost all organizations worldwide. In order to cope up with the new demands, Higher Education...     

The effectiveness of computer and tablet assisted intervention in early childhood students’ understanding of numbers. An empirical study conducted in Greece

The present study aimed to assess the effect of two different types of digital technologies (computers and tablets) in early childhood students’ understanding of numbers. Three hundred and sixty-five children (mean age in months, M?=?62.0, SD?=?5.5) from 21 kindergarten classes were randomly assigned to two intervention groups and a business-as-usual control group. The interventions were conducted over 24 half-hour lessons. Data was collected during the 2013–2014 school year using a three-step research procedure. Students’ knowledge about numbers was assessed using the Test of Early Mathematics Ability-3 (TEMA-3). Findings were that (a) both experimental groups significantly outperformed the control group on the posttest, (b) the group that used tablet computers significantly outperformed the group that used personal computers on the posttest, and (c) there was no significant difference between genders on the posttest. Our findings support that computers and especially tablets, when combined with the use of developmentally appropriate software into the children’s daily routines, may provide a substantial contribution to early childhood students’ comprehension of numbers.     

A comparative study of the effects of a concept mapping enhanced laboratory experience on Turkish high school students’ understanding of acid-base chemistry

The research reported here consists of the introduction of an intervention based on a series of laboratory activities combined with concept mapping. The purpose of this intervention was to enhance student understanding of acid-base chemistry for tenth grade students’ from two classes in a Turkish high school. An additional aim was to enhance student attitude toward chemistry. In the research design, two cohorts of students were compared; those from the intervention group (N = 31) and a second group (N = 28) who were taught in a more traditional manner. Student understanding of acid-base chemistry was evaluated with a pretest/posttest research design using a purpose-designed instrument, the Concept Achievement Test (CAT) consisting of 25 items, 15 multiple choice and ten multiple choice with explanation. Alternative conceptions identified in the pretest were incorporated into the intervention, which thereby sought to move students toward views more in accord with scientific views for the concepts. Statistical tests indicate the instrument is reliable (with an alpha reliability of 0.81) and the analysis of the findings revealed statistically significant differences between the intervention and traditional groups with respect to conceptual understanding. Examination of student explanations and analyses of semi-structured interviews conducted with selected students suggest that the main influence was the laboratory activities. Analysis of the findings in the context of relevant literature that concept mapping in conjunction with laboratory activities is more enjoyable, helps student link concepts, and reduces their alternative conceptions.     

Building and destroying students’ ‘academic identities’: the power of discourse in a two‐way immersion classroom

Two‐way immersion is a model for bilingual education designed to help language‐minority students develop additive bilingualism while at the same time offering language‐majority students a chance to learn a second language. There is a great deal of rhetoric around two‐way immersion that claims these programs aim to improve overall equity among diverse groups of learners. The article begins with a brief review of the available research on two‐way immersion education. Then, using Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue and Bourdieu’s and Gee’s ideas of discourse/Discourse, this article takes a close‐up look at the discourse patterns in one second‐grade two‐way immersion classroom in Northern California, with an eye to uncovering how the teacher deliberately attempts to expose students to ‘alternative’ discourses and to lead language‐minority students to construct positive identities as learners. The ultimate question the article attempts to address is whether and to what extent any classroom program can create lasting change in the larger society through exposing students to ‘alternatives’ to mainstream dominant discourses within the context of classroom norms and activities.     

Situated meaning-making of the human body: a study of elementary school children’s reasons in two different activities

In this text we compare children’s expressions in drawings to their statements during interviews, for the purpose of understanding how different situations afford children to make meaning. In specific we study how two different activities interact and afford children to make meaning differently about the human body. The analytic attention is drawn to the meaning-making the children made as they in pairs were asked to explain the body drawings that they did prior to the interviews. Meaning-making was studied by using a practical epistemology analysis, an analysis facilitating understanding of how relations are established in a developing conversation, and more generally providing understanding from a child perspective. The results indicate that several reasons are at hand for children in the two different situations; namely, social, artistic, practical, empirical and memory reasons are identified. Social reasons refer to statements belonging to the social context and items that were described as inappropriate to express. Artistic reasons were interpreted from aesthetic judgements, referring to the artistic quality of the drawing. Practical reasons were given in situations where children expressed, for example, that the space limited their opportunities to draw. Empirical reasons are built on children’s statements referring to picture items that are identified by pointing or touching their own body. Memory reasons are involved in all the situations where children explained items were previously omitted, because the body part had been temporarily forgotten. Furthermore, we suggest that children interpret situational aspects and make judgements concerning the relevance of their different reasons. By these means we hope to facilitate children’s understanding of interview questions and also to improve researchers’ understanding of children’s ability to grasp relevant details prior to their response (or participation).