This one-day workshop for pre-service teachers was aimed at implementing a uniquely designed and ready-to-implement chemical engineering curriculum in high school coursework. This educational and professional development opportunity introduced: 1) chemical engineering curriculum and career opportunities, 2) basic industrial processes and flow…

The continued downward spiral of enrollment in physical sciences in the USA and Europe has science educators concerned on both sides of the Atlantic. Physics has been particularly hard-hit, with the percentage of students choosing to major in the subject at the lowest level in decades. University physics has a reputation as a difficult, abstract…

We introduce the USAYPT--the United States Association for Young Physicists Tournaments, Inc. Our motto is "Better teaching and learning by doing research in your high school." We believe that all high school teachers can improve their knowledge of physics by forming small groups that perform non-trivial--but not cutting edge--research. In order…

This document presents the proceedings of the 19th Annual Research Forum held June 26, 2014, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 17 action research papers: (1) Using Voices to Change Minds: Oral Performance and Poetry in the English Classroom (Erika Bunpermkoon), (2) Imagining Audiences: The Use…

Provides a first-week activity in which student groups brainstorm and build cars to win a race. Includes rules, suggestions, time line, and evaluation methods. Notes that many misconceptions may arise from the activity but these are dealt with in the next few weeks of class. (MVL)

Describes problems in teaching problem solving and summarizes research in this area. Presents Guided Design or Guided Decision Making as a problem-solving approach in which groups of students work their way through a model of the problem-solving process as they wrestle with a discipline-specific situation. (PR)

Introduces a teaching strategy for Year 10 and senior biology students to demonstrate food and energy processes along a river ecosystem. In studying the River Continuum Concept, groups of students undertake a series of interrelated projects as a means of understanding the big picture of the food and energy interrelationships evident in healthy…

Discusses the use of analogies and other instructional strategies (problem solving, demonstration, group labs, and large group discussion) in dealing with students' preconceptions in physics. (PR)

This paper presents the results of a study of the cognitive strategies in which ninth-grade science students engaged as they used a learner-centered dynamic modeling tool (called Model-It) to make original models based upon stream ecosystem scenarios. The research questions were: (1) In what Cognitive Strategies for Modeling (analyzing, reasoning,…