High School Science Classrooms Research Articles

Coral Diseases: Incorporating Scientific Research and Authentic Learning into the High School Science Classroom

Coral Diseases: Incorporating Scientific Research and Authentic Learning into the High School Science Classroom

Arguing with objects and bodies: embodied reasoning and material entanglements in science learner interaction

ABSTRACT How do people use objects and gestures to shape scientific argumentation? This paper engages the concept of “entanglement” as a heuristic for considering the potentials and constraints that gestures and materials create for interactants. Drawing on video recorded data from an academic-year-long linguistic ethnography of a high school science classroom in southern Arizona, USA, I examine the entanglement of discourse, bodies, and objects in one act sequence to reveal differences in the situated practices of high school students as opposed to professional scientists. The analysis reveals that objects and gestures allow scientific novices to engage in collaborative sense-making as they transform discourse and are transformed in discourse. At the same time, the flexibility and contingency of objects and gestures can be problematic for novices dealing with ambiguous understandings of natural phenomena, leading to interpretations that may or may not correspond to expert understandings. Reckoning with materiality in science argumentation must account for the limitations of objects and bodies as forms of evidence as well as their potential to afford forms of agency.

Improving STEM Education through Resource Activation: A Study of Culturally Relevant Teaching for Critical Data Literacy in a High School Science Classroom

Interest in promoting data literacy among K-12 students has grown, driven by the need to cultivate skills in using data effectively across various fields of study. Integrating discipline-specific curricula, like bioinformatics, which merges biology and informatics, can broaden student engagement in STEM. While earlier efforts focused on technical data skills, recent research emphasizes a sociocultural approach to encourage critical data literacy, aligning with culturally relevant teaching (CRT). This study investigates a teacher's instructional practices for CRT in prompting critical data literacy. We used a resource activation framework that aims to explore the ways in which a teacher utilized material resources (tangible objects and tools), cultural resources (knowledge and skills), social resources (interactions and relationships), and symbolic resources (recognition and prestige). We worked with a science teacher, Tracy, who activated resources to adapt and teach a bioinformatics problem-based learning curriculum rooted in real-world problem-solving in STEM, connecting students with community issues, such as asthma and air quality. We deductively analyzed classroom observation notes, interviews, and recordings of the professional development workshop sessions. We found that during the curriculum implementation, Tracy activated cultural and social resources to enable access to other resources that were not readily available. Our findings suggest that the activation of cultural and social resources concurrently allowed the teacher to address diverse student needs, foster relevance and engagement, collaborate with colleagues, and continuously enhance their teaching practices. Ultimately, activating all four resources empowers teachers to provide high-quality instruction, leading to improved overall STEM education.

The Power of Suggest…ed Practice: Using Optional Practice Instead of Assigned Homework in the High School Science Classroom

The Power of Suggest…ed Practice: Using Optional Practice Instead of Assigned Homework in the High School Science Classroom

Novice Decision Making During Creation of Electric Go-Kart Racing Educational Material

In 2017 Purdue evGrand Prix hired a K-12 Indiana public educator (the author) to write instructional material that could be implemented into participating teams’ high school science and engineering classrooms. The goal was to create science-based integrated STEM learning experiences that complement the construction and racing of a 48-volt electric go-kart. Over the next four years, the instructional designer learned how to implement instructional design techniques and theories while navigating the changing dynamics of a fledgling educational program. Personal experience with woodworking, classroom instruction, and classroom curriculum development played a huge role in instructional design decisions. Early decision-making processes were rooted in making slight modifications to existing educational resources. Here, minor edits were made for application to motorsports generally, and go-kart racing specifically. When specific go-kart educational materials were not available, educational and classroom best practices became the raw material for creating new and innovative instructional material. Collaboration with peers, professionals, and subject matter experts became the norm, while feedback from participating schools helped develop a single-minded focus to meet both teacher and student needs. Formalized training within an instructional design and technology course provided much-needed organizational and methodological skills associated with the transition from a teacher designing classroom resources to an instructional design professional.

Diversifying Large-Scale Participatory Science: The Efficacy of Engagement through Facilitator Organizations

Large-scale, scientist-led, participatory science (citizen science) projects often engage participants who are primarily white, wealthy, and well-educated. Calls to diversify contributory projects are increasingly common, but little research has evaluated the efficacy of suggested strategies for diversification. We engaged participants in Crowd the Tap through facilitator organizations like historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), predominantly white institutions, high school science classrooms, and corporate volunteer programs. Crowd the Tap is a contributory project focused on identifying and addressing lead (Pb) contamination in household drinking water in the United States. We investigated how participant diversity with respects to race, ethnicity, and homeownership (a proxy for income) differed between participation facilitated through a partner organization and unfacilitated participation in which participants came to the project independently. We were also interested in which facilitators were most effective at increasing participant diversity. White and wealthy participants were overrepresented in unfacilitated participation. Facilitation helped increase engagement of people of color, especially Black and lower-income households. High schools were particularly effective at engaging Hispanic or Latinx participants, and HBCUs were important for engaging Black households. Ultimately, our results suggest that engagement through facilitator organizations may be an effective means of engaging diverse participants in large-scale projects. Our results have important implications for the field of participatory science as we seek to identify evidence-based strategies for diversifying project participants.

Effective disciplinary literacy strategies for students with disabilities in middle and high school science classrooms

More students with disabilities (SWDs) are being educated in the general education classroom than ever before. This means that SWDs are spending more time in middle school science classrooms. SWDs may struggle to access information from science textbooks and lessons for multiple reasons, including reading difficulties. In this article, the authors review the literature and provide recommendation on how science teachers can implement these strategies into their classrooms. These strategies include vocabulary instruction, comprehension strategies, and graphic organizers.

Strategies for teaching waves in the next generation science standards

Waves and their applications are one of the disciplinary core ideas in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), but the performance expectations include concepts that have not historically been an important part of teaching waves in high school science classrooms, with a particular focus on technologies that utilize waves and on students making connections between different types of waves including sound, seismic waves, and electromagnetic waves. In this talk, I will share resources and strategies that I use to teach some of these concepts, including both hands-on activities and digital resources. Many of these resources are also appropriate to other physics courses, including AP Physics and introductory college physics courses.

Disagreement as context for science-civic learning: an analysis of discursive resources brought to bear by high school science students.

Amid a broader sociopolitical milieu of division, disagreement, and uncivil debate, this study investigates instances of disagreement among students in a high school science classroom as they attempt to answer the civic question of what should we do about climate change, a long contentious topic in the USA. Using a theoretical framework that frames relational practices and ideological positions as discursive resources, this study analyzes the resources youth bring to bear within disagreement. Through discourse analysis and qualitative coding of naturalistic moments of disagreement, this study shows that youth leverage diverse constellations of discursive resources when disagreeing over science-civic matters. From this analysis, I suggest paths forward in terms of research and practice in efforts to prepare young people for science-civic participation that will inevitably involve disagreement with others in one's community.

Factor Structure and Dimensionality of an Instrument designed to Measure the Metacognitive Orientation of Thai Science Classroom Learning Environments

<p style="text-align:justify">The purpose of this study was to establish the factor structure and dimensionality of the Metacognitive Orientation Learning Environment Scale – Science (MOLES-S) in the Thai context. The metacognitive orientation of a science classroom learning environment is defined as the extent to which psychosocial conditions that are known to enhance students’ metacognition are evident in a specific science classroom. This study builds on earlier work in the research areas of science education, metacognition, and learning environments. A sample of 5418 Thai science students in grades 10 to 12, from 40 schools across Thailand, completed the MOLES-S that had been translated into Thai. Exploratory factor analysis was undertaken and Rasch analysis was used to calibrate the scale and explore its dimensionality. The results suggest that the MOLES-S(T), where (T) represents Thailand, has the same factor structure as the original MOLES-S, is reliable, and can be used with confidence in research into metacognition in Thai high school science classrooms.</p>

“I Can Go Slapsticks”: Humor as Humanizing Pedagogy for Science Instruction With Multilingual Adolescent Immigrant Learners

Research shows that humor can play an important role in students’ language learning and literacy development. However, studies on how teachers intentionally enact humor as a pedagogical tool are still limited. This classroom discourse study examines the interactional construction and pedagogical functions of humor in one U.S. multilingual high school science classroom. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of languaging and affect, we took a discourse analytic approach to analyze classroom interactions and interview data to examine how the teacher used humor as humanizing pedagogy. We illustrate that the teacher held a humanizing teaching approach to working with immigrant students and viewed “slapstick humor” as part of his humanizing pedagogy. He co-constructed humor with his multilingual students in classroom interaction, and his pedagogical humor worked towards simultaneously humanizing learning, teaching scientific content, and building authentic caring relationships with students through care and empathy. We conclude the article with a discussion of the implications of this study for the research and practice of using humor in language and literacy classrooms with immigrant multilingual students.

Classroom activities as predictors of control, value, and state emotions in science

This article examined relations among classroom activities, students’ momentary control- and value-related appraisals, and students’ state emotions in high school science classrooms. Throughout 10 days of instruction, high school students (N = 244) reported their state emotions and task-specific control- and value-related appraisals during science class, while classroom activities were observed via video. Results obtained through structural equation modeling and MANOVA suggest that perceived value, control, and emotions differed significantly across classroom activities. Classroom activities exhibited direct effects on emotions as well as indirect effects via control and value appraisals. Results suggest that theorized links among environment, appraisals, and emotions may differ by both the emotion and the classroom activity under consideration.

Assessing Instructional Cognitive Load in the Context of Students' Psychological Challenge and Threat Orientations: A Multi-Level Latent Profile Analysis of Students and Classrooms.

To better understand instructional cognitive load, it is important to operationalize and assess it in novel ways that can reveal how different students perceive and experience this load as either challenging or threatening. The present study administered a recently developed instruction assessment tool—the Load Reduction Instruction Scale-Short (LRIS-S)—to N = 2,071 students in 188 high school science classrooms. Multilevel latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify student and classroom profiles based on students' reports of instructional cognitive load (load reduction instruction, LRI; using the LRIS-S) and their accompanying psychological challenge orientations (self-efficacy and growth goals), and psychological threat orientations (anxiety and failure avoidance goals). In phase 1 of analyses (investigating students; Level 1), we identified 5 instructional-psychological student profiles that represented different presentations of instructional load, challenge orientation, and threat orientation, ranging from the most maladaptive profile (the Instructionally-Overburdened & Psychologically-Resigned profile) to the most adaptive profile (Instructionally-Optimized & Psychologically-Self-Assured profile). The derived profiles revealed that similar levels of perceived instructional load can be accompanied by different levels of perceived challenge and threat. For example, we identified two profiles that were both instructionally-supported but who varied in their accompanying psychological orientations. Findings also identified profiles where students were dually motivated by both challenge and threat. In turn, these profiles (and their component scores) were validated through their significant associations with persistence, disengagement, and achievement. In phase 2 of analyses (investigating students and classrooms; Levels 1 and 2), we identified 3 instructional-psychological classroom profiles that varied in instructional cognitive load, challenge orientations, and threat orientations: Striving classrooms, Thriving classrooms, and Struggling classrooms. These three classroom profiles (and their component scores) were also validated through their significant associations with classroom-average persistence, disengagement, and achievement—with Struggling classrooms reflecting the most maladaptive outcomes and Thriving classrooms reflecting the most adaptive outcomes. Taken together, findings show that considering instructional cognitive load (and new approaches to empirically assessing it) in the context of students' accompanying psychological orientations can reveal unique insights about students' learning experiences and about important differences between classrooms in terms of the instructional load that is present.

Assessing the Effectiveness of a Novel Microscopy Technique in Middle & High School Science Classrooms

Although research and new technologies have introduced different ways of observing microorganisms, including scanning and electron microscopy, these methods are expensive and require equipment that is typically not found in a middle school classroom. The transmission-through-dye technique (TTD; Gregg et al., 2010), a new optical microscopy method that can be used with current basic light microscopes, relies on the fairly simple mechanism of filtered light passing through a dyed medium to produce an image that reflects cell thickness. With this technique, living microorganisms look bright red against a dark background, and movement can be seen easily among dead microorganisms and debris that show up black. Since the technique is low-cost and easy to implement, it addresses the needs of practitioners and is appropriate for a wide array of school contexts. We describe a three-week, hands-on, inquiry-based unit on TTD microscopy for middle and high school students.

Impact of Practical Education Network on Students in Selected Ghanaian Junior High School Science Classrooms

Within the science education community, it is widely accepted that quality science instruction is focused on knowledge construction and inquiry. The Ghanaian education system has many hallmark issues that inhibit such instruction, however, including a pervasive teacher-centred pedagogy, lack of laboratory materials, and minimal support systems for teachers. The Practical Education Network (PEN) is an organisation that has been working to address these problems by training science teachers to utilise locally available, affordable materials to teach topics in the national science curriculum in a hands-on manner. To study the impact that the use of the PEN approach to hands-on learning has on students’ critical thinking skills, attitudes towards school science and standardised test scores, over 300 students in six Junior High Schools in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana participated in a year-long, quasi-experimental study. The data from comparison and experimental groups consisted of scores on a national standardised test, a pre/post-test simulating the national examination, and a pre/post student survey. The data were analysed for any differences between the two student groups over time. The findings indicated that the PEN approach had a beneficial impact on students’ attitudes towards school science and standardised test scores. There was inconclusive evidence of the impact of the PEN approach on critical thinking skills. The findings suggest that the PEN approach may positively impact science instruction.

Disrupting My Teaching Practices: A Teacher Educator Living as A Contradiction

ABSTRACT As a teacher educator, I became concerned that my practice did not reflect my constructivist perspective. This realization disrupted my belief about my teaching efficacy. I understood that teacher education is often criticized for not sufficiently preparing teachers. Was I part of the problem? As a result, I initiated this study to examine my practice to identify how I might align my beliefs and practice. Using a self-study approach, I analyzed my teaching practices in a high school science classroom and during a science teacher education course. Brooks and Brooks’ guiding principles of constructivism provided the lens, and qualitative coding mechanics provided the basis for analysis. Finally, using a modified Theory of Planned Behavior, the findings revealed that I struggled to initiate meaningful constructivist-oriented activities in a high school setting. In a subsequent teacher education course, I exhibited a deeper understanding and application of constructivist-oriented pedagogies. The results lead to recommendations for my continual development, for other teacher educators who discover that they are also living as a contradiction, and for graduate schools who prepare teacher educators.

A framework for exploring small group learning in high school science classrooms: The triple problem solving space

Classroom activities using an inquiry approach often feature students working in small groups to reduce teacher-centeredness and maximize student autonomy. Within science classrooms, group work may mirror modern scientific research: successful interaction among team members (social/relational) that engages probing questioning and creativity (cognitive/content) with emotional attachment to their work (affective). Previous research on small group work in school science focused either on single dimensions of group work—mostly on needed cognitive resources, e.g., knowledge and skills for understanding and addressing the problem—or on the interplay between cognitive and social resources (e.g., science knowledge and capacity to foster group interactions), while the role of affects is relatively unexplored. We propose that group work demands the collective construction of a “triple problem solving space” in which all three dimensions—cognitive/content (the problem to be solved), social/relational (the challenges based on social interactions within the group), and affective (the emotional life of the group)—are developed on a moment-by-moment basis. Assessing whether and to what extent students collectively construct a positive triple problem solving space, we videotaped small groups’ interactions (3–4 students per group) during inquiry-based activities in three ninth grade science classes. Results showed that when a group collectively positions itself positively in terms of social and affective dynamics, it tends to engage effectively in the cognitive aspects of the assigned tasks. The qualitative analysis further highlights the socially-shared regulation processes that involve an ongoing negotiation between intra- and inter-individual resources and which are the result of each group member deploying individual resources along each dimension, monitoring and evaluating their peers’ processes, and adjusting their processes accordingly through integration of information from self and others.

High school students' situational engagement associated with scientific practices in designed science learning situations

AbstractThis study seeks to understand how different scientific practices in high school science classrooms are associated with student situational engagement. In this study, situational engagement is conceptualized as the balance between skills, interest, and challenge when the reported experiences are all high. In this study, data on situational engagement were collected using the experience sampling method (ESM) from 142 students in southern Michigan (the United States), resulting 993 ESM responses, and 133 students in southern Finland, resulting 1,351 responses. In both countries, scientific practices related to developing models and constructing explanations were associated with higher student situational engagement than other practices. In southern Finland, using a model was also associated with a high level of student situational engagement. The results indicate that students may experience situational engagement more often in science classrooms that use models than those that do not employ such practices. Thus, scientific practices related to models should be used frequently in science classrooms to situationally engage students while learning science.

Does choice matter or is it all about interest? An investigation using an experience sampling approach in high school science classrooms

Having choices during learning is often touted as beneficial for student motivation. However, it is not clear whether the motivating factor is choice or the act of pursuing tasks that are of greater interest, which is often afforded by choice. Using data collected via the Experience Sampling Method from 244 youth (ages 14–18) in the United States, we explore the effects of choice and interest on student engagement, affect, and learning in multiple high school science classrooms from a single high school. Results of multilevel modeling indicate that choice and interest are independently associated with engagement, affect and learning, though effect sizes are larger for interest. Momentary interest was also found to be a stronger predictor than initial interest. Further, the specific types of choices educators offer (e.g., who to work with, how to do an activity, how to allocate time) are differently associated with affect, learning, and engagement.

Land use impacts poison frog chemical defenses through changes in leaf litter ant communities

ABSTRACT Much of the world’s biodiversity is held within tropical rainforests, which are increasingly fragmented by agricultural practices. In these threatened landscapes, there are many organisms that acquire chemical defenses from their diet and are therefore intimately connected with their local food webs. Poison frogs (Family Dendrobatidae) are one such example, as they acquire alkaloid-based chemical defenses from their diet of leaf litter ants and mites. It is currently unknown how habitat fragmentation impacts chemical defense across trophic levels, from arthropods to frogs. We examined the chemical defenses and diet of the Diablito poison frog (Oophaga sylvatica), and the diversity of their leaf litter ant communities in secondary forest and reclaimed cattle pasture. Notably, this research was performed in collaboration with two high school science classrooms. We found that the leaf litter of forest and pasture frog habitats differed significantly in ant community structure. We also found that forest and pasture frogs differed significantly in diet and alkaloid profiles, where forest frogs contained more of specific alkaloids and ate more ants in both number and volume. Finally, ant species composition of frog diets resembled the surrounding leaf litter, but diets were less variable. This suggests that frogs tend to consume particular ant species within each habitat. To better understand how ants contribute to the alkaloid chemical profiles of frogs, we chemically profiled several ant species and found some alkaloids to be common across many ant species while others are restricted to a few species. At least one alkaloid (223H) found in ants from disturbed sites was also found in skins from pasture frogs. Our experiments are the first to link anthropogenic land use changes to dendrobatid poison frog chemical defenses through variation in leaf litter communities, which has implications for conservation management of these threatened amphibians.