Comparing two objects falling together is a small-scale version of Galileo's classical experiment, demonstrating the equivalence between gravitational and inertial mass. We present here investigations by a group of ten-year-olds, who used iPads to record the drops. The movie recordings were essential in the follow-up discussions, enabling the…

Teachers can find opportunities to incorporate design thinking and scientific inquiry within any lesson where a constraint of the design can be connected to a scientific experiment. Within a lesson, this connection establishes context between engineering and science and can positively impact students' learning and interest in these subjects. The…

A medium-scale quantitative study (n = 90) found that 10-11-year-old pupils dealt with theory and evidence in notably different ways, depending on how the same science practical task was delivered. Under the auspices of a 2×2 part-randomised and part-quasi experimental design, pupils were asked to complete a brief, apparently simple task involving…

This research is an action research which aims to implement contextual teaching and learning (CTL) approach to learn mathematics, focus on the integration subjects. The approach utilizes the use of mathematics manipulative so that students can understand a mathematical concept to construct their own. The method which used in this research are…

Elementary, middle-level, and high school science teachers commonly find their students have misconceptions about heat and temperature. Unfortunately, student misconceptions are difficult to modify or change and can prevent students from learning the accurate scientific explanation. In order to improve our students' understanding of heat and…

To investigate student difficulties in solving word problems in algebra, we carried out a teaching experiment involving 51 Indonesian students (12/13 year-old) who used a digital mathematics environment. The findings were backed up by an interview study, in which eighteen students (13/14 year-old) were involved. The perspective of mathematization,…

Are you interested in using argument-driven inquiry for middle school lab instruction but just are not sure how to do it? "Argument-Driven Inquiry in Physical Science" will provide you with both the information and instructional materials you need to start using this method right away. The book is a one-stop source of expertise, advice,…

This paper describes investigative homework with apples, aiming to contribute to the primary-school students' understanding of density and conditions leading to floating and sinking. The assignment represents an opportunity for individual autonomous learning of physics and adoption of established scientific concepts through practical activities…

The study explores if established support devices for paper-pencil problem solving, namely worked examples and incremental scaffolds, are applicable to laboratory tasks. N?=?173 grade eight students solved in dyads a physics laboratory task in one of three conditions. In condition A (unguided problem solving), students were asked to determine the…

As a result of the use of random assignment to treatment, randomized experiments typically have high internal validity. However, units are very rarely randomly selected from a well-defined population of interest into an experiment; this results in low external validity. Under nonrandom sampling, this means that the estimate of the sample average…

When evaluators plan site-randomized experiments, they must conduct the appropriate statistical power analyses. These analyses are most likely to be valid when they are based on data from the jurisdictions in which the studies are to be conducted. In this method note, we provide software code, in the form of a SAS macro, for producing statistical…

This article presents an Exponential Growth Learning Trajectory (EGLT), a trajectory identifying and characterizing middle grade students' initial and developing understanding of exponential growth as a result of an instructional emphasis on covariation. The EGLT explicates students' thinking and learning over time in relation to a set of tasks…

There are well-acknowledged challenges to scaling computerized performance-based assessments. One such challenge is reliably and validly identifying ill-defined skills. We describe an approach that leverages a data mining framework to build and validate a detector that evaluates an ill-defined inquiry process skill, designing controlled…

This paper contributes to the discourse in stochastic education of how young students deal with learning settings that allow a data-based approach to probability. By using the micro-structure of arguments by Toulmin (1958), it explores which arguments students use and which role they play in the learning process. The data stems from design…

A multiple day activity for students to create large-scale plastic objects from the biopolymer chitin (major component of lobster, crab, and shrimp shells) is described. The plastic objects created are durable and made from benign materials, making them suitable for students to take home to play with. Since the student-created plastic objects are…