The observation of living animals in school laboratories provides authentic views of biological research. Various studies stress the importance of primary experiences in biology classes. However, educational films may serve as an alternative in some cases. The aim of this study was to investigate student motivation before and after treatments,…

Inquiry learning is a widely recognized method for fostering inquiry competence in science education. Nevertheless, there is discussion about how to best support students while working on inquiry tasks (in this case: experiments on causal relationships). To identify the kind of support students need in order to design experiments in upper grades,…

Recent research on syllogistic reasoning suggests that the logical status (valid vs. invalid) of even difficult syllogisms can be intuitively detected via small changes in affective state (Morsanyi & Handley, 2012). In a series of 6 experiments, we replicated effects of logical status on liking ratings of difficult syllogisms (although their…

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) is an international, non-profit educational organization. The Association's purpose is to advance the knowledge, theory, and quality of teaching and learning at all levels with information technology. "EdMedia + Innovate Learning" took place in Amsterdam, The…

In Germany, science education standards for students at the end of grade nine have been in existance since 2005. Some of these standards are dedicated to scientific inquiry (e.g. experimentation). They describe which abilities learners are expected to possess at the end of grade nine. In the USA, several documents describe standards for…

In Germany, science education standards for students at the end of grade nine have been in existence since 2005. Some of these standards are dedicated to scientific inquiry (e.g. experimentation). They describe which abilities learners are expected to possess at the end of grade nine. In the USA, several documents describe standards for…

During reading information is acquired from word(s) beyond the word that is currently looked at. It is still an open question whether such parafoveal information can influence the current viewing of a word, and if so, whether such parafoveal-on-foveal effects are attributable to distributed processing or to mislocated fixations which occur when…

In the past decade, a growing lack of engineers, natural scientists, information technology experts, and mathematicians has been noted, especially in Europe. Corresponding to the need to attract young people to science and technology, numerous extracurricular science labs ("out-of-school labs") have been established, especially in…

In four experiments, task-switching processes were investigated with variants of the alternating runs paradigm and the explicit cueing paradigm. The classical diffusion model for binary decisions (Ratcliff, 1978) was used to dissociate different components of task-switching costs. Findings can be reconciled with the view that task-switching…

Teachers' professional knowledge is assumed to be a key variable for effective teaching. As teacher education has the goal to enhance professional knowledge of current and future teachers, this knowledge should be described and assessed. Nevertheless, only a limited number of studies quantitatively measures physics teachers' professional…

In education systems learners are expected to possess an increased degree of autonomy and show initiative in learning processes, inspecting learning materials and understanding contents. An efficient growth of knowledge inside and outside of school is only possible if students have skills which initiate, guide and control the search for…

Despite numerous studies on reading and multimedia comprehension, the usage of text and picture with different reading strategies has rarely become a focus of research. The current study aims to explore whether the usage of text differs from the usage of picture when readers follow different strategies of knowledge acquisition. In a…

Although some research suggests a link between procedural fairness and creativity, so far no study has directly tested whether a real manipulation of procedural fairness affects creativity. Additionally, research on procedural fairness effects consists mostly of unique studies, but more realistic, life-like longitudinal experiments with repeated…

Current GPS-based mobile navigation assistance systems support wayfinding, but they do not support learning about the spatial configuration of an environment. The present study examined effects of visual presentation modes for navigation assistance on wayfinding accuracy, route learning, and configural learning. Participants (high-school students)…

We examined selected situational emotions (interest, well-being and anxiety) experienced by 291 secondary school tenth graders during a hands-on gene technology lesson. Two different instruction groups (I-1, I-2) participated in the same teaching unit, in which four basic gene technology experiments were performed. Using a modified…