One obstacle to understanding abstract concepts such as the "control of variables" strategy (CVS) is the tendency for learners to focus on surface rather than deep features in instructional materials. However, in tasks such as learning CVS, these same surface features may also support understanding, provided learners realize the…

Background: The absence of Physical Education (PE) from the South African school curriculum before its reintroduction in recent years contributed to health concerns regarding the low physical activity (PA) levels of children and adolescents in South Africa. Purpose: This study evaluated the effects of a once-a-week enhanced quality PE programme on…

The connective approach is developed by Sir Peter Strawson, emeritus professor of philosophy at Oxford University, as an effective way to understand the fundamental structure of human thinking in the field of analytical philosophy. This article provides insights for extending the work of Strawson, Tay, and Tay et al. to education, in particular,…

Evidence for cognitive benefits of simulated versus physical experiments is unclear. Seventh grade participants (n = 147) reported their understanding of two simple pendulum problems (1) before conducting an experiment, (2) immediately following experimentation, and (3) after a 12-week delay. "Problem type" was manipulated within…

Many studies have shown benefits associated with engaging students in problem-solving activities prior to administering lessons. These problem-solving activities are assumed to activate relevant knowledge and allow students to develop some initial knowledge structures, which support understanding of the lesson. In this paper we report the results…

In this study, a mission synchronization-based peer-assistance approach is proposed to improve students' learning performance in digital game-based learning activities. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment has been conducted in an elementary school natural science course to examine the participants' learning…

Thus far, it is unclear how students can learn most effectively from their own errors. In this study, reflections on the rationale behind self-made errors are assumed to enhance knowledge acquisition. In a field experiment with pre/post/follow-up design, the authors practiced fractions with 174 seventh- and eighth-grade students who were randomly…

The objective of this research and development was to develop a curriculum for enhancing grade 7 students' aesthetic sense and substantial art learning. There were 2 phases of the study consisting of: (i) the study of basic information about art aesthetics, including the attributes, approaches, theories, problems, and needs, (ii) the development…

In this experimental study, 151 middle school students explored 3 historical controversies, first reading and discussing primary source documents in groups, then writing arguments on their own. Students were either randomly assigned to an experimental condition, using argumentative schemes and critical questions as guides during discussions, or to…

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.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the combination of both analogy-based simulation and laboratory activities as a teaching tool was more effective than utilizing them separately in teaching the concepts of simple electricity. The quasi-experimental design that involved 66 seventh grade students from urban Turkish elementary…

A wind energy focused curriculum for grades 4-8 was designed and implemented to promote the understanding of wind energy concepts with American Indian students. 57 students who participated in the 2009 summer program of the "Reach for the Sky" (RFTS) Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) received the curriculum. The…

A mixed-methods sequential research design has been used to test the effect of introducing teacher science demonstrations to a traditional book-learning sample of 384 Grade 7 boys and girls from five schools in Lahore, Pakistan. In the quasi-experimental quantitative study, the eight classes of comparable ability were designated either…

This study aims to show that training using a computer game incorporating an audio-visual phoneme discrimination task with phonological units, presented simultaneously with orthographic units, might improve literacy skills. Two experiments were conducted, one in secondary schools with dyslexic children (Experiment 1) and the other in a…

Background: Most policy doctrines promote the use of scientific inquiry in the K-12 classroom, but good inquiry is hard to implement, particularly for schools with fiscal and safety constraints and for teachers struggling with understanding how to do so. Purpose: In this paper, we present the design of a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE)…