Effects of thematic‐based,hands‐on science teaching versus a textbook approach for students with disabilities

Institutions of higher education, states, and local K–12 districts have been challenged to improve math and science education for our nation's students. In the past few years, there has been renewed interest in inquiry‐based, activity‐oriented instruction in science for students with disabilities. Yet, there still exists the need for further empirical evidence to support instructional improvements for students with more involved emotional and behavioral disabilities. This study describes a program in which 18 middle school students with serious emotional disturbances were instructed, over the course of 8 weeks, on “Matter” by two different instructional approaches. Students in one classroom received a traditional textbook approach to science content, whereas students in another classroom received science instruction by a hands‐on, thematic approach. Over the course of instruction, data were collected regarding students' behavior and achievement. Results indicate that, overall, students in the hands‐on instructional program performed significantly better than the students in the textbook program on two of three measures of science achievement, a hands‐on assessment and a short‐answer test. The students did not differ on a multiple‐choice format test. With regard to behavior, there were no significant differences in behavioral problems found between the two groups of students over the course of the study. Findings are discussed in relation to instructional implications for students with disabilities in the science classroom. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 245–263, 2005     

Conceptual Teaching Through Multimediated Self‐instruction: a study with professional nursing students

A multimediated self‐instructional program was developed to introduce new concepts and techniques in an emerging area of nursing education. Two field testings of this instructional program were conducted with nursing students enrolled in a university. The results indicated that cognitive achievement did not differ between students taught by multimediated self‐instruction and lecture‐discussion. Students were able to effectively learn new nursing content through both teaching methods. There was no significant relationship found between students’ opinions about the instructional method experienced and their cognitive achievement. Students expressed some unfavourable feelings towards multimediated self‐instruction, possibly related to their general lack of prior experience with independent study or videotaped instruction. The effective use of multimediated self‐instruction is discussed.     

Activating instruction: How to foster study and thinking skills in higher education

New instructional procedures have been developed and applied at the University of Helsinki, Department of Psychology since 1986. The aim of these procedures has been to enhance effective study skills. The idea is to stimulate active learning in students by so called activating instruction, which is theoretically based on a combination of Vygotsky’s ideas, applied cognitive science, and process-oriented instruction. In many courses, students have been able to choose a preferred form of instruction among the new and the traditional methods. A six-year longitudinal study was conducted in order to see, what kinds of choices psychology students (N=114) made and how these choices were connected with their academic progress. On the basis of student’s evaluations, the new methods differed significantly from traditional methods. Students associated the development of study skills and understanding more often with activating instruction than with traditional courses. The number of activating courses taken was related to success in final exam and thesis writing. Those who participated in activating instruction studied slower during the first three years of their studying, but were more successful in the long term.     

Nature of Science and Science Content Learning

Besides viewing knowledge about the nature of science (NOS) as important for its own value with respect to scientific literacy, an adequate understanding of NOS is expected to improve science content learning by fostering the ability to interrelate scientific concepts and, thus, coherently acquire scientific content knowledge. However, there is a lack of systematic investigations, which clarify the relations between NOS and science content learning. In this paper, we present the results of a study, conducted to investigate how NOS understanding relates to students’ acquisition of a proper understanding of the concept of energy. A total of 82 sixth and seventh grade students received an instructional unit on energy, with 41 of them receiving generic NOS instruction beforehand. This NOS instruction, however, did not result in students having higher scores on the NOS instrument. Thus, correlational analyses were performed to investigate how students’ NOS understanding prior to the energy unit related to their learning about science content. Results show that a more adequate understanding of NOS might relate to students’ perspective on the concept of energy and might support them in understanding the nature of energy as a theoretical concept. Students with higher NOS understanding, for example, seemed to be more capable of learning how to relate the different energy forms to each other and to justify why they can be subsumed under the term of energy. Further, we found that NOS understanding may also be related to students’ approach toward energy degradation—a concept that can be difficult for students to master—while it does not seem to have a substantive impact on students’ learning gain regarding energy forms, transformation, or conservation.     

Degree of mnemonic support and students’ acquisition of science facts

Eighth-grade students silently read passages that described dichotomized attributes of nine North American minerals. One-fourth of the students were given instruction in the use of mnemonic techniques, and were provided with “keywords” and mnemonic illustrations of the passage content; one-fourth were provided with keywords and given instructions for creating internal mnemonic images of the passage content; one-fourth were given instructions for creating their own keywords and internal mnemonic images; and the remaining fourth were given motivational instructions and told to use their “own best method” of studying while reading the passages. Mnemonic instruction, when accompanied by experimenter-provided keywords and mnemonic illustrations, produced superior recall of the mineral attributes in comparison to the other three conditions on both immediate and eight-day delayed performance tests. Implications of the findings are discussed with regard to the amount of external support necessary for effective use of mnemonic techniques by students reading expository prose passages.     

Science Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities: A Meta‐Analysis

Although science has received much attention as a political and educational initiative, students with learning disabilities (LD) perform significantly lower than their nondisabled peers. This meta‐analysis evaluates the effectiveness of instructional strategies in science for students with LD. Twelve studies were examined, summarized, and grouped according to the type of strategy implemented. Effect sizes (ES) were calculated for each study. Across all studies, a mean ES of .78 was obtained, indicating a moderate positive effect on students with LD science achievement. Findings also align with past reviews of inquiry‐based instruction for students with special needs, indicating that students with LD need structure within an inquiry science approach in order to be successful. Additionally, results suggest that mnemonic instruction is highly effective at increasing learning disabled students' acquisition and retention of science facts.     

Effects of active‐learning experiences on achievement,attitudes, and behaviors in high school biology

Active‐learning labs for two topics in high school biology were developed through the collaboration of high school teachers and university faculty and staff and were administered to 408 high school students in six classrooms. The content of instruction and testing was guided by State of Texas science objectives. Detailed teacher records describing daily classroom activities were used to operationalize two types of instruction: active learning, which used the labs; and traditional, which used the teaching resources ordinarily available to the teacher. Teacher records indicated that they used less independent work and fewer worksheets, and more collaborative and lab‐based activities, with active‐learning labs compared to traditional instruction. In‐class test data show that students gained significantly more content knowledge and knowledge of process skills using the labs compared to traditional instruction. Questionnaire data revealed that students perceived greater learning gains after completing the labs compared to covering the same content through traditional methods. An independent questionnaire administered to a larger sample of teachers who used the lab‐based curriculum indicated that they perceived changing their behaviors as intended by the student‐centered principles of the labs. The major implication of this study is that active‐learning–based laboratory units designed and developed collaboratively by high school teachers and university faculty, and then used by high school teachers in their classrooms, can lead to increased use of student‐centered instructional practices as well as enhanced content knowledge and process learning for students. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 960–979, 2007     

Navigating a sea of ideas: Teacher and students negotiate a course toward mutual relevance

Theories of social cognition and verbal communication were used to analyze the science teaching of an experienced fourth-grade teacher. Her teaching skills in language arts and reading were assets in negotiating the rapid flow of relatively unstructured information typical of inquiry in elementary classrooms, to help students generate relevant information about hands-on experience. The teacher was a collaborator in this case study of her thinking and instructional planning, and her students' learning in a unit of instruction about space. Implications for elementary science instruction include recognizing the importance of embedded speech in conceptually broad discussions with students. Efforts to reform elementary science instruction should attend to these instructional skills more common to language arts instruction.     

Science diaries: a brief writing intervention to improve motivation to learn science

This study investigated the hypothesis that prompting students to self-assess their interest and understanding of science concepts and activities would increase their motivation in science classes. Students were randomly assigned to an experimental condition that wrote self-assessments of their competence and interest in science lessons or a control condition that wrote summaries of those same lessons. Writing activities were 10?min long and were given approximately once a week for eighteen weeks. Student motivation was assessed via self-report surveys for achievement goals and interest in science before and after the intervention. Students in the experimental condition showed higher endorsement of mastery goals and reported greater situational interest in science topics after the intervention compared to students who summarised the lessons. Increases in situational interest predicted higher individual interest in the domain. Results indicate an instructional practice requiring just 3?hours out of a semester of instruction was sufficient to achieve these effects on motivation in science classes.     

Lesson study for accessible science: Building expertise to improve practice in inclusive science classrooms

The Lesson Study for Accessible Science (LSAS) project created middle school teams comprised of both science and special education teachers who engaged in collaborative work to improve instruction in inclusive classrooms. The intervention is based on Lesson Study, a professional development approach that originated in Japan, which supports the systematic examination of practice and student understanding. Using an experimental design, teams of teachers were randomly assigned to the LSAS intervention or to a wait‐list comparison group. The results of this study suggest that science and special educators in the LSAS intervention were able to generate more accommodations for students with learning disabilities, and they increased their ability to set an instructional context and adapt an instructional plan to meet science learning goals for all students in an inclusive classroom. They did not, however, show significant increases in their knowledge of science content or learning disabilities. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 1012–1034, 2012     

Elementary Science Indoors and Out: Teachers, Time, and Testing

In this article, we present the results from a mixed-methods research study aimed to document indoor and outdoor fifth grade science experiences in one school in the USA in the context of accountability and standardized testing. We used quantitative measures to explore students’ science knowledge, environmental attitudes, and outdoor comfort levels, and via qualitative measures, we examined views on science education and environmental issues from multiple sources, including the school’s principal, teachers, and students. Students’ science knowledge in each of the four objectives specified for grade 5 significantly improved during the school year. Qualitative data collected through interviews and observations found limited impressions of outdoor science. Findings revealed that, despite best intentions and a school culture that supported outdoor learning, it was very difficult in practice for teachers to supplement their classroom science instruction with outdoor activities. They felt constrained by time and heavy content demands and decided that the most efficient way of delivering science instruction was through traditional methods. Researchers discuss potentials and obstacles for the science community to consider in supporting teachers and preparing elementary school teachers to provide students with authentic experiential learning opportunities. We further confront teachers’ and students’ perceptions that science is always best and most efficiently learned inside the classroom through traditional text-driven instruction.     

Professional development to support principals' vision of science instruction: Building from their prior experiences to support the science practices

The implementation of science reform must be viewed as a systems-level problem and not just focus on resources for teachers and students. High-capacity instructional leadership is essential for supporting classroom science instruction. Recent reform efforts include a shift from learning about science facts to figuring out scientific phenomena in which students use science practices as they build and apply disciplinary core ideas. We report findings from a research study on professional development (PD) to support instructional leaders' learning about the science practices. After participating in the PD, the instructional leaders' familiarity with and leadership content knowledge of the science practices significantly improved. Initially, principals used their understandings from other disciplines and content neutral visions of classrooms to make sense of science instruction. For example, they initially used their understandings of models and argument from ELA and math to make sense of science classroom instruction. Furthermore, some principals focused on content neutral strategies, like a clear objective. Over the course of the PD workshops, principals took up the language of the science practices in more nuanced and sophisticated ways. Principals' use of the language of the science practices became more frequent and shifted from identifying or defining them to considering quality and implementation in science classrooms. As we design tools to support science, we need to consider instructional leaders as important stakeholders and develop resources to specifically meet their needs. If the science feels too unfamiliar or intimidating, principals may avoid or reframe science reform efforts. Consequently, it is important to leverage instructional leaders' resources from other disciplines and content neutral strategies as bridges for building understanding in science. We argue that the science practices are one potential lever to engage in this work and shift instructional leaders' understandings of science instruction.     

Science Education and Students with Learning Disabilities

Students with learning disabilities (LD) are increasingly expected to master content in the general education curriculum, making the need for effective instructional supports more important than ever before. Science is a part of the curriculum that can be particularly challenging to students with LD because of the diverse demands it places on cognitive performance. In this summary we review a number of strategies that have been validated for learners with LD. The strategies include supports for (a) verbal learning of declarative information, (b) processing information in texts, (c) activities‐based instruction/experiential learning, (d) scientific thinking and reasoning, and (e) differentiated instruction. We also summarize the research regarding the impact of teacher behavior on achievement for students with LD in science education. The strategies reviewed yield tangible and positive effect sizes that suggest that their application to the target domain will substantially improve outcomes for students with LD in science education.     

Teaching science as a cultural way of knowing: merging authentic inquiry, nature of science, and multicultural strategies

Due to the growing number of students from populations underrepresented in the sciences, there is an intensified need to consider alternatives to traditional science instruction. Inquiry-based instructional approaches provide promise and possibility for engaging underrepresented students in the activities of science. However, inquiry-based instruction without culturally relevant pedagogy and instructional congruency, may not be sufficient to support non-mainstream students in science learning, and may even serve to challenge students’ cultural ways of knowing. This conceptual paper suggests that aligning reform efforts in science education to the field of multicultural education would buttress efforts to reach underrepresented student groups in science. This includes providing culturally relevant instruction and instruction toward making the assumptions of science explicit, in particular. To this end, this paper draws from literature in multicultural education to propose that deconstructing science through instruction in NOS may support Latino, African American and English language learning students in science learning.     

Students’ perceptions of vocabulary knowledge and learning in a middle school science classroom

This study investigated eighth-grade science students’ (13–14-year-olds) perceptions of their vocabulary knowledge, learning, and content achievement. Data sources included pre- and posttest of students’ perceptions of vocabulary knowledge, students’ perceptions of vocabulary and reading strategies surveys, and a content achievement test. Students’ perceptions of vocabulary knowledge were compared before and after instruction to see whether students believed they gained knowledge and the ability to explain categories of technical science terms. Students’ perceptions of vocabulary knowledge increased as a result of instruction. The participants had favorable views of the vocabulary and reading strategies implemented and believed the literacy approaches were important for their developing science knowledge. In addition, students’ content achievement was compared to a national data set. Students in this study outperformed a national data set on all content knowledge items assessed. Students’ perceptions of their knowledge and vocabulary and reading strategies were congruent with their content achievement. This study is one of the first to highlight the pivotal role students’ perception of vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary and reading strategies plays in science content learning.     

The effect of different chunking strategies in complementing animated instruction

The purpose of this exploratory and small‐scale study was to examine the instructional effects of different chunking strategies used to complement animated instruction in terms of facilitating achievement of higher order learning objectives. Eighty‐five students were randomly assigned to three treatment groups: animated program instruction, simple visual‐text (static images and verbal explanation) chunked animated program instruction and the animated complex visual‐text chunked program instruction. The difference between simple and complex chunked instructions is the content. Simple chunks only deal with one content area while the complex chunks explain two or more related content areas. Students interacted with their respective web‐based instructional treatments and completed four criterion measures. Results (ANOVA) indicated that significant differences in achievement were found to exist in facilitating higher order learning objectives when chunking strategies were specifically designed and positioned to complement the animated instruction. Results also indicated that complex chunking is more effective in reducing the cognitive load present in an animated instructional environment, and that students need prerequisite knowledge before being able to profit from animated instruction designed to facilitate higher order learning outcomes.     

Daily interest,engagement, and autonomy support in the high school science classroom

The current investigation examined relations between high school students’ daily and cumulative situational interest in science class and their engagement, as well as their perceptions of the motivational climate of the classroom. Two-hundred and eighteen high school students in 43 science classes participated in a diary study in which students provided reports of their classroom experiences after each class session for a six-week instructional unit. Multilevel modeling results suggested that interest during science class and behavioral engagement declined over the course of the unit. Daily and cumulative interest during science class predicted behavioral engagement (working hard, participating, and paying attention), cognitive engagement, and agentic engagement. Students’ interest during science class also predicted perceptions that teachers engaged in the motivationally supportive practice of emphasizing student choice during the same and the following class day. Results suggested that the links between interest with working hard and perceptions of choice provision were stronger early in the instructional unit compared to later in the unit. Moreover, some variation was found in these relations depending on students’ gender and ethnicity, as well as depending on the course content and level. Implications for practice, theory, and future research are discussed.     

Personalization of mathematics word problems in Taiwan

This study investigated the effects of group personalization of instruction on the mathematics achievement and attitudes of 72 fifth-grade Taiwanese students. Personalization was accomplished by incorporating personal information and preferences provided by students into their mathematics word problems. Students were blocked by ability level, then randomly assigned to a personalized or nonpersonalized version of an instructional program on mathematics word problems. Students made significant pretest-to-posttest gains across treatments and scored significantly higher on personalized than on nonpersonalized posttest problems. However, the personalized treatment did not produce a significant achievement difference over the nonpersonalized one. Significant two-way interactions reflected greater pretest-to-posttest improvement for lower-ability than for higher-ability students and a greater difference between scores on personalized over nonpersonalized posttest problems for lower-ability students. The posttest scores of high-ability students were limited by a ceiling effect. Student attitudes were significantly more favorable toward the personalized instruction.     

Curriculum Enhancements in Inclusive Secondary Social Studies Classrooms

This investigation compared the use of traditional instruction with that of classwide peer tutoring using materials containing embedded mnemonic strategies to provide strategic information and supplemental practice of important content. Eight inclusive seventh grade social studies classes with 186 students, of whom 42 were classified with mild disabilities, were randomly assigned to treatment and traditional conditions, delivered over 10 weeks of instruction. All students were given a pretest, three unit tests, and a posttest. Overall findings revealed that experimental condition classes statistically outperformed comparison condition classes on content learned; this was true for target content (taught directly in the experimental condition) as well as nontarget content (related information not included in the experimental condition). Implications for inclusive content area instruction are provided.     

Determinants of K-2 School Teachers' Orientation towards Inquiry-Based Science Activities: A Mixed Method Study

The purpose of this study was to describe attitudes of first and second grade teachers in Benin, toward school science and their instructional preferences (inquiry-based and traditional noninquiry-based instruction), and determine some factors that could explain these attitudes and preferences. Three hundred (N=300) preparatory classroom teachers (first and second grades) were randomly selected and surveyed regarding their attitudes and preferences. Data was gathered via the Revised Science Attitude Scale, the Science Teachers' Ideological Preference Scale, and open-ended questions. The results indicated that first and second grade teachers have a low regard for school science and low level of orientation toward both inquiry-based and traditional instruction. This means that these teachers rejected traditional approaches of science teaching but at the same time did not accept inquiry teaching as a legitimate alternative. Participants' low level of orientation towards inquiry-based instruction could be explained by three dimensions of attitude; handling (handling of science equipment), time (time required to prepare and teach science), and need (the basic needs students have for science). However, time and handling significantly contributed to their orientation towards traditional noninquiry-based instruction. Four categories from the open-ended responses – perceived instructional practices, student-centeredness of the curriculum, lack of materials and supplies, and training – were used to understand and further explain participants' attitudes and instructional preferences.