Secondary Science Classes Research Articles

Differentiated instruction in digital video games: STEM teacher candidates using technology to meet learners’ needs

ABSTRACT Differentiated instruction (DI) is a teaching approach that aims to achieve learning for diverse students. This study reports on promoting STEM teacher candidates’ (TCs’) implementation of technology-enhanced DI in teacher education courses. The research questions are: (1) How do TCs develop digital video games (DVGs) to be inclusive of DI?, and (2) If, and to what extent are DVGs effective tools to implement DI in secondary science classes? The analysis of eight DVGs, developed by the TCs, shows that most TCs were able to proficiently integrate DI practices in their DVGs. Furthermore, DVGs are effective tools to differentiate instruction by facilitating pacing variation for different students, differentiating difficulty levels, scaffolding, integrating multimodalities to present the content in different formats, utilizing engaging features, representing different learners of various backgrounds, promoting conceptual understanding, and enabling different assessment forms especially formative and diagnostic assessments. This research is significant as it highlights how digital resources such as DVGs can be used to address individual learners’ needs, interests, profiles, and academic achievement levels. Additionally, this research informs instructional designers, game developers, and curriculum specialists on ways to incorporate equity, diversity, and inclusion pedagogies such as DI in digital educational resources.

Strategies in promoting creative thinking skills in science classroom: A systematic review

There is an abundance of studies investigating the effects of teaching strategies on promoting students' creative thinking skills. However, most of the teaching strategies only focus on divergent thinking as a sub-skill to promote creative thinking among secondary school students. Besides, no systematic review has been carried out to propose a teaching strategy and approach that focus on three creative thinking sub-skills namely associative thinking, visual thinking and divergent thinking. Hence, to achieve this research objective, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) were used. This research systematically review forty articles obtained from seven electronic databases: Web of Science, Scopus, EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Taylor & Francis, Google Scholar, and Google. These articles were traced from 2010 until 2022. This research found that the majority of these articles highlighted digital storytelling as a project-based learning teaching strategy that can be used to promotes these three creative thinking sub-skills. In addition, the review also found that the science scenario task-orientation was the predominant approach taken to incorporate students' creative thinking skills in the science classes. Overall, the contribution of this research has identifies project-based digital storytelling with science scenario approach as a comprehensive teaching strategy that can promote students' creative thinking skills in secondary science classes. Keywords: Creative thinking, sub-skills, teaching approach, teaching strategy, systematic review

The Proposal of a Verbal Interaction Framework for Elementary Science Teachers

This study is purposed to specifically present and suggest two of the five aspects of the existing framework using data recorded by science class teachers. Mortimer and Scott (2003) viewed teaching purposes, content, communicative approach, patterns of discourse, and teacher intervention as five aspects of classroom discourse analysis, analyzed for secondary science classes. In this study, four episodes were extracted from elementary science classes, the entire analysis was conducted, and the analysis frame developed in this study was applied. The results of the study showed that elementary science classes were analyzed differently according to class flow and the score of the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP). In addition, the analysis framework presented in this study and the score of the RTOP were slightly consistent.

Using the Jigsaw Strategy in the English Language Learner Classroom to Teach Content-Specific Vocabulary

Multilingual learners (ML) at the secondary level come to the classroom with a variety of learning experiences and language capabilities. An obstacle ML students could face is learning the everyday usage of an additional language while simultaneously learning the academic and content language, which can cause a potential challenge in the classroom. Thus, teachers must be able to adapt their teaching pedagogy to assist MLs, which can prove to be challenging. Academic vocabulary and conversational language are two different aspects of learning a new language, with academic being the more difficult to obtain since it is not as tangible as conversational language. This teaching techniques piece explains a modified jigsaw vocabulary activity that was used successfully in a sheltered ML secondary science class; additionally, this strategy can be modified and used across content disciplines and grade levels, and abilities. This activity utilizes cooperative learning, graphic organizers, and peer-to-peer engagement to create an optimal learning environment for ML students.

Curriculum Differentiation’s Capacity to Extend Gifted Students in Secondary Mixed-ability Science Classes

Investigated were differences between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of curriculum differentiation strategies to extend highly able students in mixed-ability secondary science classes. Gifted underachievement and disengage-ment is increasing in Australian schools, potentially linked to these percep-tion differences regarding curriculum differentiation. 161, Year 7 students, aged aproximately 11 years (n = 29 highly able; n = 132 non-highly able), and 43 science-trained teachers were surveyed. Examined were students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the importance and achievability of 24 curriculum differentiation strategies, within the curriculum components of content, pro-cess, product, and environment. Significant dissimilarities occurred regard-ing curriculum differentiation strategies having been achieved at least once during every work unit. In particular, some strategies requiring modification of the learning environment were considered by highly able students to be significantly less frequently achieved, compared to teachers’ perceptions. Im-plications for policy and practice were explored. Further research of curricu-lum differentiation that includes students’ perspectives is required.

Enseigner les ondes mécaniques comme jeux d’apprentissage sur simulation

In this paper, we propose to present a teaching approach based on an investigation process. This approach entitled teaching by Prevision, Confrontation, Discussion and Resolution (PCDR). We then had trained a novice teacher in the Inquiry-based activity and we provide through a full educational scenario for him. We have subsequently observed the teacher applying the new approach on simulation of mechanical waves in the secondary science class. The analysis of this session is part of the theory of joint action in didactics (JATD); the methodology adopted is based on analysis of the descriptors at the situations and their implementations. The descriptors are epistemic games, learning games, didactic contract and didactic setting.

Navigating Alarming Media Messages About Nutrition and Health

This study focuses the emerging need for young people to critically respond to alarming messages in contemporary media highlighting the potential benefits or harms of certain foods. Besides being technical, advancements in the field of nutrition reported in media are often of tentative and speculative character, primarily selected and constructed on the basis of their news value rather than as representing established knowledge. The study aims to study students’ capabilities to navigate and critically respond to controversial media messages about health and nutrition in the context of science education. Our theoretical point of departure is in the concept “an examined life” in the critical reflection tradition of Socrates and the Stoics. We analyze how groups of upper secondary science class students engage in critical examination of a controversial message about cow’s milk encountered through Swedish public service news media on the Internet. The results illuminate that even when controversial findings are produced by a reputed university and communicated through independent media, students are capable of discerning the need to scrutinize such findings and are capable of performing such critical examination drawing on experiences of scientific investigations. Students’ openness to question authoritative voices in society and to illuminate the new findings on milk from multiple perspectives reflects how “an examined life” may be enacted in the context of science education. Inviting students to participate in related activities shows promise for enabling a critical examination of themselves and others in ways deemed important for democratic citizenship.

Socioscientific issues via controversy mapping: bringing actor-network theory into the science classroom with digital technology

ABSTRACTWhat are the current challenges and opportunities for bringing actor-network theory (ANT) into issues-based science education? This article discusses experiences gained from introducing an educational version of ANT deploying digital technology into an upper secondary school science class. This teaching innovation, called controversy mapping, has been pioneered in different contexts of higher education before being adapted to school education. Experimenting with controversy mapping in a Swedish science class raised both conceptual and practical issues. These centre on: (1) how ANT-inspired controversy mapping redesigns the citizenship training enacted by institutionalized approaches to issues-based education as socioscientific issues (SSI); (2) how controversy mapping reconfigures the interdisciplinarity of issues-based science education; and (3) how controversy mapping displaces scientific literacy and knowledge of the nature of science as guiding concerns for teaching in favour of new preoccupations with digital literacy and digital tools and methods as contemporary infrastructures of free and open inquiry.

Writing-to-Learn in Secondary Science Classes: For Whom Is It Effective?

Although many agree that writing can make a unique contribution to learning, harnessing that contribution is difficult, particularly in the middle grades. The purpose of this study was to measure the efficacy of a feasible writing-to-learn intervention in Grade 6–11 science classes. We focused on middle school students because this group has been least responsive to writing interventions in previous research. We conducted an 8-week intervention in which students completed short metacognitive and longer argumentative writing tasks. Our results indicated that overall students’ ability to engage in scientific rhetoric improved, and we identified minimal difference in the growth of middle and high school students. We therefore conducted a cluster analysis to examine how learner-level variables impacted the effectiveness of the intervention. Most notable was that students with low writing motivation and science knowledge showed the largest response to the intervention. These findings suggest that writing-to-learn can be implemented in secondary science to support scientific literacy development.

Exploring Teachers Practices of Classroom Assessment in Secondary Science Classes in Bangladesh

The study investigates teachers’ classroom assessment practices of secondary schools in Bangladesh. The study is mainly quantitative with some integration of qualitative approach. Secondary science teachers and their science classrooms were main data source of the study, which were selected randomly. Data sources were secondary science teachers and their science classrooms. The study used a lesson observation protocol to understand their classroom assessment practice, and pre-lesson and post-lesson observation interview protocols as main sources of data collection. Qualitative data from interview were used to triangulate the quantitative data from observation. A total of thirty teachers (twenty male and ten female) were chosen randomly from six secondary schools in Dhaka. The study explored that teachers’ current practice of classroom assessment was to only assess students learning achievement and they followed traditional methods to assess students. The dominated assessment activity was oral questioning and very few students take part in the assessment activities by answering the questions. The classroom questions are basically focused very specific responses and encouraged rote learning; even students’ didn’t get enough time for thinking and answering the questions. Therefore the study suggests changing current practices by using different assessment strategies like self and peer assessment and focus on assessment for learning to ensure effective teaching-learning and quality education. These findings can inform the classroom teachers as well as o relevant stakeholders in making necessary changes in the present classroom assessment practices in Bangladesh.

Development of Two-Dimensional Classroom Discourse Analysis Tool (CDAT): scientific reasoning and dialog patterns in the secondary science classes

BackgroundIn a science classroom, students do not simply learn scientific ways of doing, knowing, and reasoning unless they find ways of appropriating scientific discourse. In the Next Generation Science Standards, major forms of scientific discourse are emphasized as a main part of the Science and Engineering Practices. To enhance student engagement in scientific discourse, teachers need to help students differentiate scientific ways of talking from everyday ways of talking. Thus, science teachers should be able to be aware of the differences to provide opportunities for students to engage in scientific discourse.ResultsIn this study, the classroom discourse analysis tool (CDAT) was developed to help science teachers and educators identify the patterns of their classroom discourse with the lens of scientific reasoning. The CDAT suggests a new way of discourse pattern finding with the two-dimensional graphic organizer and the quantitative data produced by the coding. To pilot the CDAT analysis, 13 videos and transcripts of two middle and one high school teachers’ physical science classes were viewed and analyzed. The results from CDAT coding show illustrative information that characterizes the classroom discourse patterns in relation to scientific reasoning and teachers’ questioning and feedback. A coded CDAT table shows what reasoning components used in the classroom dialogs between the teacher and students. It also shows how students engaged in the dialogs with the variations of their answers by the teacher’s question and feedback.ConclusionThe results show the patterns of students’ responses strongly depend on teacher’s question or feedback. In addition, this analysis also generates various quantitative data that represent certain characteristics of the classroom discourse, i.e., length of dialog and the number of reasoning components used. The possible implications of CDAT analysis are to explore the relationships between teachers’ discourse patterns and students’ achievement along with changes in their reasoning skills. Student attitudinal outcomes such as motivations, interests, or self-efficacy could also be compared by the classroom discourse patterns revealed by CDAT. CDAT analysis itself can also be used in a teacher professional development as an intervention to help teachers see their classroom discourse patterns.

How sensitive teachers are in elementary and secondary science classes in terms of technology and environmental ethics

This study aimed to determine the sensitivity of science teachers towards technology and environmental ethics. The study group comprised science teachers and classroom teachers working in the city of Mugla in 2016–2017, and data were collected using a 36 item Likert technology and environmental ethics questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was calculated as 0.8. For analysis of data, percentages, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t-test, oneway variance analysis and frequencies were used in the SPSS 20 program package. The responses given to the questionnaire items were analysed in terms of the branches of the participating teachers. The responses given to the items regarding benefits to living things differ significantly in favour of the classroom teachers. The item with which the participating teachers agreed to the highest degree was, ‘Teaching individuals how to utilise resources most effectively by getting to know environment should be a part of education’. Keywords: Ethical sensitivity, teachers, technology ethics, environmental ethics.

Using Bourdieu in practice? Urban secondary teachers’ and students’ experiences of a Bourdieusian-inspired pedagogical approach

This article discusses an attempt at a Bourdieusian-inspired form of praxis, developed and implemented in collaboration with nine London teachers, aimed at developing a socially just approach to engaging students with science. Data are discussed from nine months of classroom observations of nine secondary science classes from six inner London schools (approximately 200 students, aged 11–15), interviews and workshop data from the nine teachers and 13 discussion groups conducted with 59 students. The approach resulted in noticeable changes in practice, which were perceived by teachers and students to improve student engagement, cultivate a range of science-related dispositions and promote wider student participation and ‘voice’ in classes. Issues, limitations and possibilities for sociology of education are discussed.

Deictics and the construction of mathematics and science knowledge in the secondary school classroom

Taking a Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) perspective, this paper examines how the concept of deixis is employed in oral discourse in two secondary science and mathematics classes in the southwestern part of the US. Drawing on audio and videotaped data from two classrooms, we examine how verbal deixis, or words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional context, serves as a potential resource for the organisation of learning processes. We further consider how deixis may act as an impediment to the organisation of learning processes. We outline implications for preparation of teachers of English Language Learners in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics areas, with a specific focus on middle and high school science and mathematics.

Common Alternative Astronomical Conceptions Encountered in Junior Secondary Science Classes: Why Is This So?

This article investigates students’ conceptions of certain astronomical phenomena. The 1,920 participants were drawn from junior secondary science classes in four Australian educational jurisdictions. Participants completed a modified version of the Astronomy Diagnostic Test to elicit information about their knowledge and understanding of certain astronomical phenomena and to identify any alternative conceptions that they held. Results showed that students exhibited many alternative conceptions about concepts that they should have covered in elementary school or in the first year of high school. Discussion centers on the extent to which school science takes account of the important construct of pedagogical content knowledge.

A Causal Model of Factors Constituting Students’ Proactive Learning in Lower Secondary Science Classes

A Causal Model of Factors Constituting Students’ Proactive Learning in Lower Secondary Science Classes

IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERISATION OF EXEMPLARY SCIENCE ASSESSMENT PRACTICES

The research described in this paper was aimed at identifying exemplary assessment practices in secondary science classes. In the first stage, following a review of the literature, a six-scale instrument of 48 items was trialled with a sample of 470 students from grades eight, nine and ten in 20 science classrooms in three Western Australian schools. Based on internal consistency reliability data and exploratory factor analysis, refinement decisions resulted in a five-scale instrument that was named the Student Perceptions of Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ). In the second stage, the SPAQ was used with an attitude scale, and a self-efficacy scale. This survey was administered to a larger sample of 960 students from 40 science classes from the same grades as in the first stage. Statistical analyses confirmed the validity and reliability of the SPAQ. Based on the results of this survey exemplary teachers were identified. In the third and last stage interviews with teachers and students were conducted. Classes of these exemplary teachers were also observed. These exemplary teachers were found to be thorough in their teaching, giving students enough time to prepare for the assessment, giving students freedom to choose from a variety of assessments and were flexible in teaching and assessment. They also demonstrated in-depth understanding of the science topics they were teaching.

Integrating BalloonSAT and Atmospheric Dynamic Concepts into the Secondary Classroom

Arkansas BalloonSAT is an educational outreach and scientific research program that is part of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, AR. The following is a unit of instruction to incorporate BalloonSAT measurements into secondary science classes. Students interpret graphs and identify several atmospheric trends and properties of a typical balloon flight. Students engage critical thinking skills in developing and answering their own questions relevant to the BalloonSAT program. Prerequisite concepts students should know are how to interpret graphs and unit conversions. Students should have a basic understanding of gravity, units of temperature and distance, and error in measurements. The unit is designed for one week after end-of-course exams and before the end of school. The unit may take two to five 50-minute periods, depending on how many activities are completed.

A study of the search for a good secondary science classes: a case study of the alternative school students

A study of the search for a good secondary science classes: a case study of the alternative school students

Teacher–student dialogue: transforming teacher interpersonal behaviour and pedagogical praxis through co-teaching and co-generative dialogue

The paper reports a study of the effectiveness of co-teaching and co-generative dialogue in science learning and teaching in lower secondary science classes. The idea of co-teaching and co-generative dialogue—first proposed by two leading educationists, Roth and Tobin, in early 2000—made an international impact in educational research. In the context of the research, co-teaching and co-generative dialogue were applied for transforming teacher interpersonal behaviour. The pre-validated Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) was administered to all the year nine classes at three selected secondary schools to investigate existing teacher interpersonal behaviours and to further validate the QTI. This was followed by the implementation of co-teaching and co-generative dialogue in three selected science classrooms, one from each school. Multiple research methods (interview, students’ reflective journals, and questionnaire) were used to develop in-depth understanding of the participants. Co-teaching and co-generative dialogue helped in transforming teacher interpersonal behaviour and teachers’ pedagogical praxis. This process also had implications for improving students’ engagement, achievement and behaviour.