International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education最新文献

In this qualitative study, we examined how prospective mathematics teachers’ instructional visions align with their instructional practices through an approximation of practice opportunity. Namely, we employed scripting tasks to understand how prospective teachers complete a scripting task and respond to students’ misconceptions, and we compared their instructional visions with their responding practices. The 81 prospective mathematics teachers who were taking the “Misconceptions in Mathematics Teaching” course at two different state universities comprised the participants. Data was obtained from the instructional vision questionnaire and two scripting tasks in fractions. We analyzed the data using the content analysis technique. Our findings indicate that the majority of the participants’ instructional visions were aligned with ambitious instruction, while their responding practices were mostly inconsistent with their visions. Our findings suggest that while their instructional visions were highly reform based, prospective mathematics teachers still need to be oriented in an ambitious instructional direction in their practices.

The expectations within higher education to improve online STEM courses have continued to increase. The pressure to do so particularly pertains to the lower-level introductory courses that act as gatekeeping courses to various STEM-related majors. Rather than working alone to improve their courses, more instructors for these courses pair with the respective instructional designers at their institutions to refresh or revise, their online courses. This study examines the revisions of a two-part introduction-to-biology series of online courses with their respective online labs over the span of three years, and from a sampling of 905 students, compares the final scores from the courses and the labs between each iteration. Findings indicate that multiple iterations of a course have the potential to increase student outcomes and to decrease the student dropout rate over time. Additionally, purely online students can perform differently in response to course revisions in comparison to the online students who also enroll in non-online courses, implying that the needs of online-only students may differ from those who have a blended learning experience.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of an intervention on primary school students’ construction of knowledge on ocean acidification and the development of their systems thinking. Eighty-five 11 to 12-year-old students from five different classes of two public primary schools in Greece participated in the 8-h intervention. The intervention included inquiry-based and knowledge-integration activities, and students worked in groups during all activities. Rich pictures, made by the groups at the beginning and the end of the intervention, were used to evaluate their progress in their knowledge concerning the carbon cycle, as well as in their systems thinking. Our findings showed that the intervention contributed to primary students’ conceptual knowledge of the carbon cycle and the inclusion of ocean acidification in the carbon cycle. It also helped them improve their systems thinking, indicating that students’ systems thinking at this age could be developed through formal instruction with interventions which emphasize content knowledge and use an earth systems approach. Moreover, our findings indicate that the systems thinking perspective can serve as an effective approach to help children better understand and critically engage with complex environmental issues, such as ocean acidification.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the roles preferred by science teachers in the teaching of socioscientific issues (SSIs) in relation to the communicative approach and discourse patterns in the context of SSI and non-SSI. In this qualitative study, the holistic multiple case study design was used. The study group consisted of three science teachers and their students. Video recordings of lessons, semi-structured interviews, and vignettes about teacher roles on socioscientific issues were used as data sources. The communicative approach and discourse patterns of the teachers were analysed by discourse analysis in the context of the roles they preferred. At the beginning of the study, two teachers seemed to prefer the same role, whereas one preferred a different role. As a result of the analysis of the video recordings of the teachers’ classes, it was determined that one of the teachers enacted a different role from the one stated as her preferred role. The results of this study can provide a basis for professional development activities for teachers who are interested in improving the use of the dialogic interactive communicative approach and the discourse patterns based on this approach in their teaching.

The purpose of this study was to explore an approach to an elementary science methods course that utilized a science notebook to physically distinguished multiple perspectives of science teaching and learning. We conceptualized teacher candidates’ (TCs’) thinking within a framework titled Exploring Multiple Perspectives in the Methods Course, focusing on a student perspective and a teacher perspective. We examined the pre/post drawings of a science teacher, which included reflections on the drawings, and end-of-semester focus group responses of 30 TCs from two sections of the methods course. Nineteen TCs either included notebooks in their post-drawings or indicated their value in their reflections. Focus group responses suggested the impact of taking the student perspective and the teacher perspective in the methods course. Furthermore, TCs discussed the notebook as a reference and reflection tool for students and teachers, as a tool for assessment and recording thinking, and notebook use as an elementary teacher. The findings of this study add to the literature by examining how TCs perceive and talk about using the science notebook when it serves as a tool to support explicit attention to student and teacher perspectives in the methods course.