This small-scale field experiment tests whether an adapted values-affirmation intervention enhances youths' academic achievement and mitigates social identity threat while simultaneously raising capacity to promote social change via the development of "critical consciousness" (CC). CC is the critical analysis of inequitable social…

This paper examines the process of high school students' planning investigations in the chemistry laboratory across two consecutive academic years in terms of their actions and their progress. The context is a set of five inquiry-based laboratory tasks in which participants (9th and 10th graders, 14-15 and 15-16 years of age) are required to plan…

Students have access to the Internet at their fingertips via e-tablets and smart phones. However, the STEM fields are struggling to remain relevant in students' lives outside the classroom. In an effort to improve high school science curricula and to keep students engaged in the classroom, we developed a technology-rich bioengineering summer…

Background: Cluster-randomized experiments that assign intact groups such as schools or school districts to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. Such experiments are inherently multilevel designs whose sensitivity (statistical power and precision of estimates) depends on the variance decomposition across levels.…

Analogies are ubiquitous during instruction in science classrooms, yet research about the effectiveness of using analogies has produced mixed results. An aspect seldom studied is a model of instruction when using analogies. The few existing models for instruction with analogies have not often been examined quantitatively. The Teaching With…

In order that students can develop researching, questioning, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making skills, so that they become lifelong learning individuals, they should be improved regarding their knowledge, understanding and attitude towards natural sciences. Attitudes towards physics lessons and physical experiments of high…

In the framework of a long term teaching experiment we present an Educational approach based on the use of a dynamic geometry software and a symbolic manipulator. Here we present the general ideas of the followed approach focusing on how meanings can originate from phenomenological experience and evolve under the guidance of the teacher. In…

We address the telling/not-telling dilemma in mathematics education. Telling is instructionally important, but has been downplayed because of (a) perceived inconsistencies between telling and constructivism, (b) increased awareness of the negative consequences of relying too heavily on telling, and (c) a focus on "non-telling" actions as…