Research in Science Education最新文献

This study explored the use of digital notebooks in an elementary science methods course to encourage teacher candidates (TCs) to think critically about and reflect on important aspects of elementary science teaching. Framed within John Dewey’s experiential education and the application of this work to science education, we examined how TCs experienced digital science notebooks and the ways in which TCs plan to use them in their future classrooms. Data sources from two course sections included pre- and post-surveys and focus group interviews and were analyzed qualitatively. Findings suggest TCs’ engagement in digital notebooks as an inquiry experience and the investigative tasks therein supported organization of thoughts and reflection, taking multiple perspectives, and resulted in different levels of confidence in using digital notebooks, particularly regarding technology. Teacher candidates valued digital notebooks for use with students, noting the recording of observations and scientific explanations, differentiation and multimodal strategies, accessibility/shareability, and creativity. Concerns about digital notebooks included technology difficulties, technology access, and appropriate usage for elementary students. This study provides critical insights into how TCs perceive digital notebooks, an online tool that can be used to support active inquiry experiences in science, as students and as teachers.

STEM literacy is a desired principal outcome of STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. With the increasing popularity of Early STEM learning, it is believed that STEM literacy could be developed in the early years. However, relatively few studies have examined STEM literacy in young children. This study utilized the Delphi method and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to elicit the opinions of a panel of experts with diverse backgrounds and to construct a framework of STEM literacy for kindergarten children. The findings of the study illustrate what young children could achieve from high-quality early STEM experiences. This would help to promote curriculum development, performance assessment, and best practices in early STEM education.

The authors hereby present a case report of metastasizing pleomorphic adenoma (MPA) of the parotid gland with multiple metachronous cervical lymph node metastases and sternocleidomastoid muscle infiltration. Diagnostic evaluation, surgical management, and follow-up are discussed along with a brief review of the literature.

Current research underscores that there are only a few evidence-based programs that teach STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as part of their curriculum, especially for autistic students. Even fewer programs focus on engineering and design learning. Hence, we developed an informal afterschool maker program to develop autistic and non-autistic students’ interests in engineering to understand their experiences learning STEM concepts and values while applying the engineering mindset to develop projects. This qualitative study aimed to explore and understand students’ experiences participating in STEM activities in the maker club. We interviewed twenty-six students (seventeen autistic and nine non-autistic), nine teachers, and thirteen parents representing diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds across three public middle schools in a large urban metropolitan city between 2018 and 2019. Our thematic analysis yielded four themes: (1) active participation in STEM; (2) curiosity about STEM topics, concepts, and practices, (3) capacity-building to engage in STEM learning; and 4) understanding of the importance of STEM education in daily life. The results of this study enabled us to understand that students were deeply engaged with the content and curriculum of our program, expanded their knowledge base about scientific concepts, used engineering-specific scientific terminologies, and engaged with the engineering design process to conceptualize, test, improvise, and problem-solve. Furthermore, this afterschool engineering education program created a safe, nurturing, and stimulating environment for students to build engineering readiness skills.

‘Design and Technology’ has been propelled into the spotlight with the popularity of the idea of ‘STEM’. So much so that it is now common for primary schools to have ‘STEM classrooms’ or makerspaces. Whilst there has been an increasing exploration of the use of makerspaces, there has been limited research on the impacts, particularly with pre-service teachers (PST), who are known to lack confidence in STEM-related subjects. Therefore, in this research, we explore how different aspects of makerspaces may influence PST confidence. Participating PST worked in small groups in the Uni Makerspace to design a product as part of a formal university assessment in a primary education Science subject. The case study design includes four groups of PST and data from interviews, observations and artefacts. Results outline confidence development amongst PST with several key Makerspace influences identified, including the importance of learning to use sophisticated equipment and the key role played by the Makerspace facilitators. Implications for Makerspaces and STEM education are discussed, including the potential to leverage the ‘novelty effect’ of Makerspaces, and the need to offer extensive support, particularly in the early stages of engagement.

Abstract

STEM education is present in most recent curriculum reforms around the world. One of the main novelties of this educational movement is the integration of engineering practices into science education. In the Spanish educational context, this implies an important challenge for science teachers. So, this study analyzes whether secondary science teachers are sufficiently prepared for this purpose, as well as to find out their experiences, emotions, and appraisals in this regard. To this end, a questionnaire was designed and administered to 328 secondary science teachers as a representative sample of science teachers in Spain with a confidence level of just over 93%. The reliability of the questionnaire was evidenced by the high degree of internal consistency of the data (α = 0.88). And its validity was determined by means of an exploratory factor analysis. The results reveal that secondary science teachers, in general, have low levels of pedagogical preparation and self-efficacy to integrate engineering practices into science classes, as well as a predominant emotion of insecurity about it. There is also a strong preference among teachers for this to be done in technology subjects. It is concluded that the effective integration of engineering practices into science education is currently a complex challenge that requires ad hoc teacher training plans.

This mixed-methods study examines how pre-service teachers select instructional videos on YouTube for physics teaching. The study focuses on the role of surface features that YouTube provides (e.g., likes, views, thumbnails) and the comments underneath the videos in the decision-making process using videos on quantum physics topics as an example. The study consists of two phases: In phase 1, N = 24 (pre-service) physics teachers were randomly assigned to one of three groups, each covering a different quantum topic (entanglement, quantum tunneling, or quantum computing, respectively). From eight options provided, they selected a suitable video for teaching while their eye movements were tracked using a stationary eye tracker in a laboratory setting, and think-aloud data was collected. In the subsequent phase 2, participants were allowed to freely choose one YouTube video on a second topic of the above-mentioned ones while thinking aloud. The results reveal a significant emphasis on video thumbnails during selection, with over one-third of the fixation time directed towards them. Think-aloud data confirms the importance of thumbnails in decision-making, e.g., as evidenced by a categorization of the study participants’ arguments and thoughts voiced. A detailed analysis identifies that participants did not rely on (content-related) comments despite they have been found to be significantly correlated with the videos’ explaining quality. Instead, decisions were influenced by surface features and pragmatic factors such as channel familiarity. Retrospective reflections through a questionnaire including rating scale items support these observations. Building on the existing empirical evidence, a decision tree is proposed to help teachers identify high-quality videos considering duration, likes, comments, and interactions. The decision tree can serve as a hypothesis for future research and needs to be evaluated in terms of how it can help systematize the process of selecting high-quality YouTube videos for science teaching.

This study investigates preschool teachers’ considerations for including digital tools in science teaching to develop children’s learning of science content. Due to the ongoing digitalisation and demands in society, the utilisation of digital tools has increased significantly in educational settings. Recent research about digital tools in early childhood education focuses on various aspects of technology implementation. However, there is a research gap in which considerations underpin preschool teachers’ choices of what, why and how they integrate digital tools into science teaching. The data generation was conducted by different methods. The reflection tool Content Representations (CoRe) is used to make the preschool teachers’ considerations explicit when reflecting on planning science teaching regarding specific science content formulated as Big Ideas. Further, video stimulated recall interviews capture the preschool teachers’ considerations on their interactions with children in science activities and using digital tools. The Refined Consensus Model (RCM) of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) was employed as a theoretical framework for analysing and interpreting data around an entire teaching cycle. Some of the teachers’ considerations for including digital tools involve accessing children’s learning, making the abstract concrete and stimulating children’s engagement and learning. Further, the findings indicate that the considerations concerned knowledge about teachers’ personal PCK (pPCK) and enacted PCK (ePCK) aspects.

This study focuses on how science teachers’ Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) can be captured and developed with the support of Content representation (CoRe) in combination with video-based reflection when they plan, teach, and reflect on their teaching in sustainable development (SD). The theoretical framework is based on PCK, and the Refined consensus model (RCM) is used as a theoretical lens for conceptualising links between teaching practice and PCK development. Eleven upper-secondary school science teachers participated in the study. Data from two teachers were chosen to illustrate representative examples from the analysis. The findings indicate that the use of CoRe and video-based reflection provides opportunities for teachers to make their knowledge of practice explicit and help them begin to identify aspects within their own practice that are important for the further development of teaching SD. The use of RCM as an analytical tool also makes an important contribution to how RCM can be used to identify and capture teachers’ PCK.

This study aimed to examine the integration of four elementary science teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) components during emergency remote teaching. Data sources included teaching video recordings and stimulated interviews conducted after analyzing the teachers’ teaching videos. The data were analyzed by identifying the practical TPACK (TPACK-p) segments and by adopting the enumerative and constant-comparative approaches. Major findings of the analysis were (i) the integrations seen in the teachers’ maps become richer and more diverse as their TPACK-p proficiency increases; (ii) the learner and assessment components are the most prominent components when the teachers can integrate learners into the lesson; and (iii) the instructional management and curriculum-design components have limited integrations with other TPACK-p components. The results are discussed in light of related literature and implications are provided for science teacher education. Remote science teaching courses should be incorporated into preservice teacher education programs. Likewise, professional development programs should train in-service teacher for distance science teaching.