The paper deals with physics teaching/learning in high school. An investigation in three upper secondary school classes in Italy explored the reactions of students to a structuring lecture on optics within the discipline-culture (DC) framework that organises physics knowledge around four interrelated fundamental theories of light. The lecture…

Using multiple representations and argumentation are two fundamental processes in science. With the advancements of information communication technologies, these two processes are blended more so than ever before. However, little is known about how these two processes interact with each other in student learning. Hence, we conducted a design-based…

The school systems of many countries have been pervaded by student-centred pedagogy making students' small group discussion a common feature of the classroom practice.However, there is a lack of studies focussing different modes of discussion for the purpose of finding out whether some modes are more beneficial than others. Hence, the aim of this…

This paper reports on the design and enactment of an instructional strategy aimed to support students in constructing scientific explanations. Informed by the philosophy of science and linguistic studies of science, a new instructional framework called premise--reasoning--outcome (PRO) was conceptualized, developed, and tested over two years in…

An online curriculum about biological evolution was designed to promote increased student content knowledge and evidentiary reasoning. A feasibility study was conducted with 77 rural high school biology students who learned with the online biological evolution unit. Data sources included the Biological Evolution Assessment Measure (BEAM), an…

This article reports on one teacher's year-long project seeking to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline through class dialogue around gang affiliations. The review of literature defines the school-to-prison pipeline and its connections to gang affiliation. The study engaged methods of qualitative action research with seven male participants…

We use data from a randomized controlled trial of a middle school science intervention to explore the causal mechanisms by which the intervention produced previously documented gains in student achievement. Our study finds that implementation fidelity, operationalized as a measure of the frequency of implementation of the cognitive science…

This study investigated how a study abroad experience teaching mathematics in Tanzania, Africa impacted a group of secondary education pre-service teachers (PSTs) from the United States. In particular we discuss their ability to facilitate the learning of students in multilingual mathematics classrooms while personally developing intercultural…

Scientific argumentation has been greatly emphasized in the National Science Standard due to its ability to enhance students' understanding of scientific concepts. This study investigated the mastery level of scientific argumentation, based on Toulmin's Argumentation Model (TAP), when students engage in individual and group argumentations. A total…

This study uses WhatsApp to facilitate online discussions in developing content idea for ESL writing. A quasi-experimental study was conducted with 33 pre-university students participating in online discussions on WhatsApp for five weeks to support face-to-face instructions. Pre-test, post-test, and five weekly writing tests were administered,…

The study investigated the effects of a combination of Peer Discussion and Isomorphic Problems (PD-IPs) on high school students' graph understanding and conceptual learning. The study was conducted on kinematics and Newton's Laws of Motion with 67 high school students from two groups. The experimental group (EG) consisted of 34 students, while the…

Students' learning is assumed to be promoted through peer-group discussion. Most studies show the presence of qualitative improvements in either oral or written reasoning as a result of such interactions. However, knowledge on the relationship between talk qualities and text qualities is scarce. We adopt an explorative design using statistical…

The objective of this study was to determine whether the incorporation of group work in a teaching intervention can effectively foster students' critical thinking skills. Building upon Kuhn's critical thinking model, the research involved comparison of pretest and post-test results for 140 secondary four (10th grade) students in Hong Kong on two…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is regarded as an effective learning strategy to enhance cognition not only in traditional learning but also in e-learning. In e-learning settings, blogs and micro-blogs can plausibly provide a platform to conduct PBL. Recently, most studies on blogs and micro-blogs have respectively probed satisfaction and learning…

Purpose: This qualitative study explored the implementation of Lesson Study, a kind of teacher-directed and bottom-up approach of the Japanese model of teacher professional development in the Malaysian education context. It seeks to answer the question of how implementation of lesson study as an innovative professional development model among…