Advances in technology have increased the opportunities for designers to personalise instruction based on student actions. We conducted semi-structured interviews with an international sample of educational professionals including researchers, teachers and designers, and reviewed interdisciplinary literature on personalisation to propose a…

Advances in technology, science, and learning sciences research over the past 100 years have reshaped science education. This chapter focuses on how investigators from varied fields of inquiry who initially worked separately began to interact, eventually formed partnerships, and recently integrated their perspectives to strengthen science…

Designing learning experiences that support the development of coherent understanding of complex scientific phenomena is challenging. We sought to identify analytics that can also guide such designs to support retention of coherent understanding. Based on prior research that distributing study of material over time supports retention, we explored…

The National Science Foundation-sponsored report "Fostering Learning in the Networked World" called for "a common, open platform to support communities of developers and learners in ways that enable both to take advantage of advances in the learning sciences." We review research on science inquiry learning environments (ILEs)…

The present study investigated: (a) the relationship between IQ test scores and ability to follow specific instructions for solving matrices; and (b) the relationship between IQ test scores and the ability to follow strategy instructions for solving matrices. Findings from this investigation may clarify the relationship between intelligence and…

This book shares the lessons learned by a large community of educational researchers and science teachers as they designed, developed, and investigated a new technology-enhanced learning environment known as WISE: The Web-Based Inquiry Science Environment. WISE offers a collection of free, customizable curriculum projects on topics central to the…

Discussed are how a free choice environment can be established in the classroom, the motivational advantages to including free choice in an enrichment program, and how implementing a free choice environment can serve as a teacher training tool. Several free choice studies are described. In one such study, a free choice situation was set up in…

Whether differences in aptitude and experiences explain sex differences in proportional reasoning is examined. Subjects were pupils in grades seven, nine, and 11 from three school districts. Results indicated proportional reasoning occurs infrequently for both sexes, with males performing slightly better. Aptitude and experience measures did not…

Reports on an investigation designed to study the ability of 11 to 17 year old students to control variables when presented with science problem situations in three types of question formats (free response, multiple choice, screen question). (HM)

Presented is a study of a science program for upper elementary and middle school children encouraging the development of logical thinking skills, describing variables, interpreting and criticizing experiments, and understanding experiment design. To provide a basis for the program, the students suggested projects to be done and developed…

Four tasks which are frequently used to evaluate adolescent reasoning skill: (1) the pendulum task; (2) the ramp problem; (3) the cart experiment; and (4) the invisible magnetism experiment are analyzed to determine the Piagetian concepts that each measures. (CP)

Investigated were children's reactions when allowed to choose their own apparatus and perform experiments with appropriate directions available. Few students invented their own experiments; most followed the available printed instructions. (SL)

A science program in which students were encouraged to select their own project goal as well as the apparatus to accomplish this goal was developed and tried in two 5th grade classes. (Author)

Three task context factors that form obstacles to generalizing logical reasoning strategies for adolescents are discussed. The relationship between these obstacle factors and Piagetian theory is explored. Findings suggest that it is possible to make some predictions about how and when logical mechanisms will be generalized to new situations.…

This study was conducted to analyze the classification ability of middle class, culturally diverse, and visually impaired children after instruction in a Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS) unit. The SCIS unit was effective in improving student abilities to classify. (PS)