This study reports on a case study about multimodal work in a primary physics classroom focusing on forces. Previous research reports that students benefit from multimodal work in science classrooms. Yet, few systematic studies have been performed to reveal how students represent their experiences and ideas of science phenomena over time within…

This study addresses the measurement of high school students' epistemic knowledge associated with scientific experimentation (EKSE) which concerns "how" scientific experimentation generates knowledge and "why" that knowledge is justified. Based on philosophical, educational standards, and literature analyses, an EKSE construct…

Asian American women occupy a paradoxical space within the context of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, simultaneously overrepresented as Asian Americans and underrepresented as women. For Asian American female doctoral students, the complex layering and weaving of these intersections involves the constant negotiation of…

Research on the impact of guided investigation, including verbal guidance strategies, has expanded in the recent decade, and the current work contributes to this line of research in a museum context. The current in-depth study examines the impact of verbal guidance strategies on family learning at an open-ended museum exhibit, considering…

The purpose of this project was to investigate the effects of virtual versus physical manipulation using a simulation-based laboratory activity (SBL) and a microcomputer-based laboratory activity (MBL). Both the SBL and the MBL used computers to collect, graph, and analyze data. A major difference was that the MBL allowed the students to…

Relations between parental reports of children's interests related to science and opportunities for science learning were examined longitudinally in 192 children between ages 4 and 7 years. Science interests were tracked during 1-year periods (ages 4-5, 5-6, and 6-7) and were more prevalent among boys, particularly prior to age 6 years. Gender…

This paper explores the research perspective of neuroscience by documenting the brain cell (neuron) drawings of undergraduates, trainee scientists, and leading neuroscience researchers in a single research-intensive university. Qualitative analysis, drawing-sorting exercises, and hierarchical cluster analysis are used to answer two related…

This study aimed to investigate the effect of experimenting with physical manipulatives (PM), virtual manipulatives (VM), and a blended combination of PM and VM on undergraduate students' understanding of concepts in the domain of "Light and Color." A pre-post comparison study design was used for the purposes of this study that involved 70…

We describe a study of programs to deepen families' scientific inquiry practices in a science museum setting. The programs incorporated research-based learning principles from formal and informal educational environments. In a randomized experimental design, two versions of the programs, called "inquiry games," were compared to two control…

One hundred years after its conception, the scientific method continues to reinforce a kind of cultural lore about what it means to participate in inquiry. As commonly implemented in venues ranging from middle school classrooms to undergraduate laboratories, it emphasizes the testing of predictions rather than ideas, focuses learners on material…

The purposes of this study were to (a) gain an understanding of the views of inquiry held by faculty members involved in undergraduate science teaching and (b) describe the challenges, constraints, and opportunities that they perceived in designing and teaching inquiry-based laboratories. Participants included 19 college professors, representing…

Discusses the history of American science and science education, with particular emphasis on the development of scientific inquiry and experimentation. Focuses primarily on the activities of individuals in the 1800's, and the introduction of science into secondary schools and higher education institutions in the early 1900's. (TW)

The laboratory has been given a central and distinctive role in science education, and science educators have suggested that rich benefits in learning accrue from using laboratory activities. Twenty years have been elapsed since we published a frequently cited, critical review of the research on the school science laboratory (Hofstein & Lunetta,…

Examines features of science experiments that make them interesting to middle school students (n=59 seventh graders). Compared a model of interest in learning with the reasons students gave for liking experiments. Latent partition analysis was used to derive an empirical model from characteristics of interesting science experiments. (PR)

Discusses the development of a student's ability to control experiments as an important aim of modern science curriculum materials. Argues that most curriculum developers offer only a simplistic method of controlling variables. Suggests ways to enhance the development of variable control within the framework of student experiments. (TW)