The Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) serves K-12 students and teachers, school districts, state education agencies, and ministries of education throughout the world with curriculum materials, digital resources, professional development, leadership development (through our Leadership and Assistance for Science Education Reform [LASER]…

The challenges of contemporary society require pupils to make informed decisions and take responsible actions on problems related to science and technology. This work provides guidelines to support teachers in the design of learning scenarios that enable achievement of these goals. Two classroom examples based on contemporary news events explain…

This article discusses why pedagogical discourse analysis (PDA) can be seen as the departure point to teach through discourse and how language teachers can efficaciously use it in order to bring discourse analysis into the language classroom. To make PDA feasible in language teaching, it requires to be coordinated with actual discourse-based…

Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) model scientific inquiry practices and can provide rich learning experiences for students. However, the teacher is an essential component of how the students engage with the technology, as they embed the IVE into everyday teaching and learning. Ideally, classroom pedagogies would reflect the scientific…

This qualitative study provides baseline data on young learner attitudes towards the use of technology in primary schools. Through individual interviews, the students highlighted the importance of its application and acknowledged its potential in the education process. The benefits that they put forward are grouped into four categories:…

Research in the past ten years has shown that there has been a lack of professionals to fill the jobs available in science. One possible reason for the lack of participation in science fields lies in students' beliefs in their ability to do science, or science self-efficacy, which is linked to interest and achievement. Their perceptions of science…

Kansas, like many states that are coming off of an era of accountability under the federal No Child Left Behind requirements, is looking at more meaningful ways to value and measure student success. We have asked ourselves questions such as: are we focusing on the right measures; is our accountability system aligned to our educational priorities…

The purpose of the study on which this paper is based was to conduct a performance evaluation of student learning for an introductory course in project management in a higher educational institution in Norway. This was done by utilizing performance measurement philosophy to evaluate perceived student learning after a project-based assignment was…

Project-based learning has been variously integrated into EFL instruction to promote learners' language learning and skills. The objectives of this research study were to examine the effects of project-based learning using presentation on EFL undergraduate learners' speaking skills. Furthermore, this study sought to explore learners' opinions on…

Pre-college engineering education has gained traction in U.S. schools over the past twenty years. This growth is evident with engineering emerging as a crosscutting discipline in the Next Generation Science Standards. However, the scarcity of professional development (PD) for K-12 teachers who want to teach engineering and the few PD opportunities…

This study explores and explains teachers' perceptions and practices in using a reflective practice model to teach STEM education in a blended learning environment. The study was conducted before the COVID-19 lockdown and continued after the quarantine till the end of the semester. The transformative learning and the experiential learning theories…

This practitioner inquiry study investigates learning from the stories of emergent bilingual students as they complete project based learning units. This method of instruction created the space to have one-on-one conversations, listen in culturally responsive ways, and develop asset-based literacy curriculum. I argue that relationships formed…

Literacy is a powerful tool to engage students in learning about the social, cultural, political, and natural worlds around them. This is especially true within the discipline of science where students use reading and writing to engage in scientific inquiry. In the era of accountability reform, however, students spend more time acquiring reading…

In this yearlong qualitative study, situated within cognitive and social constructivist theory, the authors investigate the adoption of tablets (iPads) by a group of nine teacher educators for use in pre-service teacher instruction. Using data gathered from focus groups following each of three teaching terms, the authors examined how teacher…

Contribution: A hybrid approach involving reduced lecture content with project-based learning (PBL) was introduced to a standalone course in optics at an engineering school not specialized in this area, with promising results. Background: At most schools, optics is an elective "niche" area involving a single senior course. This presents…