Articles

Describing undergraduate STEM teaching practices: a comparison of instructor self-report instruments

Collecting data on instructional practices is an important step in planning and enacting meaningful initiatives to improve undergraduate science instruction. Self-report survey instruments are one of the most ...

Authors: Cody T. Williams, Emily M. Walter, Charles Henderson and Andrea L. Beach

University-level practical activities in bioinformatics benefit voluntary groups of pupils in the last 2 years of school

Bioinformatics—the use of computers in biology—is of major and increasing importance to biological sciences and medicine. We conducted a preliminary investigation of the value of bringing practical, university...

Authors: Daniel Barker, Rosanna G. Alderson, James L. McDonagh, Heleen Plaisier, Muriel M. Comrie, Leigh Duncan, Gavin T. P. Muirhead and Stuart D. Sweeney

Analysis of errors in derivatives of trigonometric functions

This article reports on an analysis of errors that were displayed by students who studied mathematics in Chemical Engineering in derivatives of mostly trigonometric functions. The poor performance of these stu...

Authors: Sibawu Witness Siyepu

Incorporating effective e-learning principles to improve student engagement in middle-school mathematics

The expanded use of online and blended learning programs in K-12 STEM education has led researchers to propose design principles for effective e-learning systems. Much of this research has focused on the impac...

Authors: Kevin Mulqueeny, Victor Kostyuk, Ryan S. Baker and Jaclyn Ocumpaugh

STEM learning through engineering design: fourth-grade students’ investigations in aerospace

Internationally, there is a growing concern for developing STEM education to prepare students for a scientifically and technologically advanced society. Despite educational bodies lobbying for an increased foc...

Authors: Lyn D English and Donna T King

The importance of context: an exploration of factors influencing the adoption of student-centered teaching among chemistry, biology, and physics faculty

Research at the secondary and postsecondary levels has clearly demonstrated the critical role that individual and contextual characteristics play in instructors’ decision to adopt educational innovations. Alth...

Authors: Travis J Lund and Marilyne Stains

Refining questionnaire-based assessment of STEM students’ learning strategies

Learning strategies are considered a key aspect for academic performance not only for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students. Refining their assessment thus constitutes a worthwhile r...

Authors: Birgit Griese, Malte Lehmann and Bettina Roesken-Winter

The role of visual representations in scientific practices: from conceptual understanding and knowledge generation to ‘seeing’ how science works

The use of visual representations (i.e., photographs, diagrams, models) has been part of science, and their use makes it possible for scientists to interact with and represent complex phenomena, not observable...

Authors: Maria Evagorou, Sibel Erduran and Terhi Mäntylä

Teachers’ perceptions of students’ mathematical work while making conjectures: an examination of teacher discussions of an animated geometry classroom scenario

This paper reports on a study examining teachers’ perceptions of students they observed in an animated episode and who were engaged in the work of making conjectures in a geometry classroom. We examined eight ...

Authors: Wendy R Aaron and Patricio G Herbst

An exploratory study of informed engineering design behaviors associated with scientific explanations

Design and science inquiry are intertwined during engineering practice. In this study, we examined the relationship between design behaviors and scientific explanations. Data on student design processes were c...

Authors: Şenay Purzer, Molly Hathaway Goldstein, Robin S Adams, Charles Xie and Saeid Nourian

The effects of using exploratory computerized environments in grades 1 to 8 mathematics: a meta-analysis of research

The process of problem solving is difficult for students; thus, mathematics educators have made multiple attempts to seek ways of making this process more accessible to learners. The purpose of this study was ...

Authors: Andrzej Sokolowski, Yeping Li and Victor Willson

Learning to teach scientific practices: pedagogical decisions and reflections during a course for pre-service science teachers

This auto-ethnographic study describes research conducted in a science teacher education program at a state university in Turkey, where I had taught the ‘laboratory applications’ course for the four previous y...

Authors: Deniz Saribas and Gaye Defne Ceyhan

Mathematical practices and mathematical modes of enquiry: same or different?

In this paper, I share a case study of a teacher’s work on mathematics tasks in the context of a ‘mathematics for teaching’ course aiming to develop mathematical content understandings and mathematical practic...

Authors: Hamsa Venkat

Research trends on argumentation in science education: a journal content analysis from 1998–2014

The primary objective of this paper is to provide a review of research on argumentation in science education based on publications from 1998 to 2014 in three science education journals. In recent years, the te...

Authors: Sibel Erduran, Yasemin Ozdem and Jee-Young Park

Case studies of a robot-based game to shape interests and hone proportional reasoning skills

Robot-math is a term used to describe mathematics instruction centered on engineering, particularly robotics. This type of instruction seeks first to make the mathematics skills useful for robotics-centered ch...

Authors: Louis Alfieri, Ross Higashi, Robin Shoop and Christian D Schunn

Exploring variation in measurement as a foundation for statistical thinking in the elementary school

This study was based on the premise that variation is the foundation of statistics and statistical investigations. The study followed the development of fourth-grade students' understanding of variation throug...

Authors: Lyn D English and Jane M Watson

Disciplinary integration of digital games for science learning

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between theory and design in the context of creating digital games to support children's development of scientific expertise.

Authors: Douglas B Clark, Pratim Sengupta, Corey E Brady, Mario M Martinez-Garza and Stephen S Killingsworth

The landscape of PreK-12 engineering online resources for teachers: global trends

The newly formed discipline of engineering education is addressing the need to (a) enhance STEM education for precollege students and (b) identify optimum ways to introduce engineering content starting, perhap...

Authors: Aikaterini Bagiati, So Yoon Yoon, Demetra Evangelou, Alejandra Magana, Garene Kaloustian and Jiabin Zhu

Planning and carrying out investigations: an entry to learning and to teacher professional development around NGSS science and engineering practices

The shift from science inquiry to science practices as recommended in the US reports A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas and the Next Generation Science Standa...

Authors: Richard A Duschl and Rodger W Bybee

Understanding of high-achieving science students on the nature of science

Although teaching nature of science (NOS) has been continually emphasized in many major reform efforts in science education, researchers claim that students do not possess adequate views of NOS. Insufficient u...

Authors: Ora Kahana and Tali Tal

Diffusion of research-based instructional strategies: the case of SCALE-UP

Many innovative teaching strategies have been developed under the assumption that documenting successful student learning outcomes at the development site is enough to spread the innovation successfully to sec...

Authors: Kathleen T Foote, Xaver Neumeyer, Charles Henderson, Melissa H Dancy and Robert J Beichner

Mathematics and biology teachers’ tacit views of the knowledge required for teaching: varying relationships between CK and PCK

The knowledge that is required for teaching includes subject matter content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Although CK and PCK are distinct components of the teachers’ knowledge, the d...

Authors: Ronit Rozenszajn and Anat Yarden

Exploring the dynamics of organizational learning: identifying the decision chains science and math faculty use to plan and teach undergraduate courses

The field of STEM education is increasingly focusing on processes of individual, cultural, and organization-level change in postsecondary institutions, yet current approaches tend to focus on individual levera...

Authors: Matthew T Hora and Anne-Barrie Hunter

Meaningful statistics in professional practices as a bridge between mathematics and science: an evaluation of a design research project

Creating coherence between school subjects mathematics and science and making these school subjects meaningful are still topical challenges. This study investigates how students make meaningful connections bet...

Authors: Adri Dierdorp, Arthur Bakker, Jan A van Maanen and Harrie MC Eijkelhof

Studying technology-based strategies for enhancing motivation in mathematics

During the middle school years, students frequently show significant declines in motivation toward school in general and mathematics in particular. One way in which researchers have sought to spark students’ i...

Authors: Jon R Star, Jason A Chen, Megan W Taylor, Kelley Durkin, Chris Dede and Theodore Chao

Meteorology meets engineering: an interdisciplinary STEM module for middle and early secondary school students

Given the continued need to educate the public on both the meteorological and engineering hazards posed by the severe winds of a tornado, an interdisciplinary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ...

Authors: Bradford S Barrett, Angela L Moran and John E Woods

The twenty-third ICMI study: primary mathematics study on whole numbers

A new study on the teaching and learning of whole number arithmetic in primary school and pre-school will be conducted by the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI). The study is organized...

Authors: Sybilla Beckmann

Investigation about representations used in teaching to prevent misconceptions regarding inverse proportionality

A major problem in teaching science is the overcoming of misconceptions. Reif found a procedure specifying a science concept. Neglect of this procedure can induce misconceptions. To find what can prevent misco...

Authors: Matthias R Risch

A comparative analysis of the relationship between learning styles and mathematics performance

As an effort to account for disparities in mathematics performance between American and East Asian middle school students, the present research aims to compare the relationship between learning styles (competi...

Authors: Vania J Ma and Xin Ma

Developing a computer-based assessment of complex problem solving in Chemistry

Complex problem-solving competence is regarded as a key construct in science education. But due to the necessity of using interactive and intransparent assessment procedures, appropriate measures of the constr...

Authors: Ronny Scherer, Jenny Meßinger-Koppelt and Rüdiger Tiemann

International Journal of STEM Education - a platform to promote STEM education and research worldwide

Authors: Yeping Li