Instructional Science

As educational systems design and build new spaces aimed for learning in the digital age, small group configurations around large screens have become a highly popular spatial feature in classrooms and libraries. In this paper, we introduce the idea of intermediate indexing as occurring in the space between the knot of intertwined resources at the fine-grained level of interactions and the public knowledge building effort at the community level. Arguing that these intermediate processes occur in these configurations, we explored a classroom community that studied within a learning space designed to support knowledge building between individuals, small groups, and the community. In this paper, we report on our interaction analysis of a small group of students around a large screen as they negotiate a set of ideas that they want to make public to their community. The results of this study elucidate how collective monitoring of artifacts and documents, inclusive participation structures, and fluid turn-taking transitions in these configurations ultimately contribute to the knowledge building effort.

This paper presents the results of two community and citizen science research projects – Cities at Play and Community Drive – in which young students (aged 11–15) from vulnerable residential areas in Copenhagen, Denmark, collaborated with architects and urban developers to engage in urban development initiatives in their neighborhoods. An educational design was developed over the two research projects in which students underwent phases of discovery, interpretation, ideation, and experimentation. Data were collected from surveys, observations, and interviews to elucidate the ways that three bridges central to community and citizen science projects can function. These include professional (bridges student learning in school and professional communities outside school), citizen (bridges student learning in school and local communities), and student (bridges student learning in school and new student communities) bridges. This research makes both theoretical and practical advancements. Theoretically, it advances our thinking about the diverse roles that participants in multi-sector partnerships can have, as well as how CCS widens the view of cultural asset-based learning by viewing students as experts of their local communities. Practically, we offer four guidelines that were gleaned from the results that can be instructive for the design of future educational community and citizen science projects.

Inquiry includes a broad spectrum of approaches, depending on students’ responsibility over the process and the extent of the teacher’s guidance. While numerous studies have examined students’ achievements and engagement across different types of inquiry-based environments, analyses of teachers’ guidance during the process are lacking. Therefore, our overarching goal was to examine the interplay between characteristics of the inquiry-based environment and teacher’s just-in-time support. Specifically, we examined the learning processes and achievements of middle-school students as they collaboratively engaged in either a structured or a guided inquiry-based task and were supported by their teacher. Structuring scaffolds were designed to support the structured inquiry task, while problematizing scaffolds were designed to support the guided inquiry task. Post-test scores indicated a similar significant increase in students’ scientific understanding for both research conditions, despite significant differences in students’ engagement in metacognitive processes during their scientific trials. Students from the guided inquiry group engaged in longer discussions and made more references to metacognitive processes, in comparison to students from the structured inquiry group. A low to moderate correlation between students’ engagement in metacognitive processes and test-scores was identified. The teacher’s regulation of students’ discourse in the structured inquiry group was significantly greater than in the guided inquiry group, though the nature of regulation was similar. We propose that the teacher’s regulation of students’ metacognitive discourse outweighed the differences between students’ learning processes in the two learning environments, resulting in similar achievements in the two conditions albeit differences in metacognitive engagement. Implications are discussed.

Academic self-concept plays a central role in successful learning and is substantially shaped by social comparisons. Research on the so-called Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (BFLPE) has yielded a highly robust and generalizable pattern of negative effects of higher class/school average achievement on students’ self-concept when controlling for individual achievement. However, most BFLPE studies have not provided information about the causes behind or the mechanisms underlying the proposed effects. To address this, we used a fully immersive virtual reality (IVR) classroom to experimentally test the extent to which students recognized performance-related classroom behavior as implicit social comparison information and how these perceptions explained differences in students’ self-concepts. Participants (N = 381 sixth-grade students) experienced an authentic yet standardized IVR teaching situation with virtual classmates who exhibited different performance levels (operationalized as 20% vs. 35% vs. 65% vs. 80% of classmates raising their hands). Hand-raising behavior had a significant positive effect on students’ perceptions of the class’ performance level (d20% vs. 65% = 0.60; d20% vs. 80% = 1.24). In line with the BFLPE, results showed a negative effect of higher performing classmates on students’ situational self-concept (d20% vs. 80% = 0.30). Students’ perceptions of the class’ performance level fully explained the effect of classmates’ hand-raising behavior on students’ situational self-concept. The study’s experimental approach provided new insights into the emergence of social comparison effects in the classroom, highlighting the major role of students’ perceptions of their classmates’ performance-related behavior, and moreover demonstrated the general potential of using IVR in classroom research.

When Virtual Reality (VR) is used to present learning content, the three-dimensional image is often not sufficient and additional text is required, either in the form of visual or auditory text. Such additional instructional text could be particularly beneficial due to the many visual stimuli and the risk of visual working memory overload. Relieving working memory by using both channels in the audio-visual presentation, there might be more cognitive capacity available to invest in germane processes for learning. In addition, the image and the text can be processed simultaneously, supporting deeper learning processes. Based on the modality effect, it is therefore assumed that an audio-visual presentation in VR, compared to a visual-only presentation, can lead to higher learning outcomes (recall, comprehension and transfer). In a between-subjects design we analysed the modality principle in VR with 61 subjects (69% female). We hypothesized that when verbal information in VR is given auditorily instead of visually, it leads to overall higher learning outcomes. For intrinsic cognitive load we assumed no differences, but lower extraneous cognitive load and higher germane cognitive load for the audio-visual condition. However, results show a reverse modality effect. The visual-only condition showed higher learning outcome scores for recall, comprehension and transfer. As expected, the conditions showed no differences with regard to the intrinsic cognitive load. However, we also found no differences in extraneous cognitive load. Contrary to our hypothesis we found higher germane cognitive load for the visual-only condition compared to the audio-visual condition, which may be attributed to repeated reading, reading strategies or other self-regulatory strategies. Future research could focus on the use of strategies or evaluate relevant process data.

Research suggests that explanatory pictures support learning, whereas pictures that distract processing resources from the main ideas of a text may impair learning and are considered as seductive illustrations. However, non-explanatory pictures that are related to the text and that do not tempt readers to focus illustrations more than the text’s main ideas might improve learning through spreading activation processes during learning. This effect might be reflected in memory measures or in metacognitive measures. Therefore, in two experiments, we tested related decorative pictures for positive effects on knowledge and transfer performance and metacognitive monitoring. Results indicate positive effects of related pictures on knowledge acquisition (Experiment 1) and metacognitive monitoring (Experiment 2). In neither experiment, related pictures enhanced transfer performance or interest (measured as triggered and maintained situational interest). This pattern of results can be explained by automatic mutual facilitation of related materials based on spreading activation processes.

In this study, we investigated whether a colourful design would foster the aesthetic appreciation of Chinese classic poetry, and the role of learners’ empathy trait in this process. Middle school students (N = 159) were assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (Colour Design: Colourful vs. Grayscale) × 2 (Empathy Trait: High vs. Low) between-subject design. Results showed that learners with high empathy attained higher scores on comprehension test and aesthetic appreciation ratings than learners with low empathy. Moreover, a significant interaction of the two factors on aesthetic emotion and evaluations ratings was found, indicating that aesthetic ratings were higher in the high empathy group than in the low empathy group with grayscale learning materials, whereas aesthetic ratings were comparable between the two groups with the colourful design. The results indicated that a colourful design can foster low empathy learners’ aesthetic appreciation, and suggested that individual differences should be taken into consideration in instructional design in the multimedia learning of poetry.

Teachers need knowledge about operant conditioning as an important way to prevent student misbehavior. In an experiment with 181 student teachers, we investigated how the acquisition of conceptual knowledge about operant conditioning can be promoted through case comparisons. Our results showed that case comparison effectively supported the acquisition of knowledge about operant conditioning. Knowledge acquisition was higher with more guidance during case comparison by providing key features to be used to compare the cases. Furthermore, with more guidance student teachers learned more efficiently. In addition, higher germane load and lower extraneous load were found to mediate the effect of instructional guidance on learning. The case comparison was also associated with a shift in student teachers’ beliefs, with more appropriate beliefs about operant conditioning afterwards. Thus, the results indicate that case comparison is an effective approach to promoting the acquisition of conceptual knowledge and positive beliefs about operant conditioning.

Previous research often revealed detrimental effects of seductive details on learning with multimedia instruction, but there are mixed findings regarding how to best explain these detrimental effects. We investigated whether the detrimental effects of seductive details are mainly mediated by the cognitive processes of diversion (deeper processing of seductive details rather than pertinent content) or disruption (unsuccessful attempts to integrate seductive details with pertinent content) by assessing the effects of instructional prompts. In an online learning experiment, participants (N = 247) learned either without seductive details (control condition) or with seductive details in one of three conditions: Participants received either a prompt informing them about the irrelevance of seductive details (irrelevance-prompt), a prompt to process seductive details and pertinent content separately (separation-prompt), or no prompt within their task instruction. We assessed recall and transfer of knowledge as dependent variables. Supporting the diversion hypothesis, participants in the no-prompt condition regarded seductive details as more relevant and consequently spent more time processing them compared to participants in the irrelevance-prompt condition, which negatively influenced their recall performance. Against the disruption hypothesis, participants in the no-prompt condition reported lower integration avoidance between seductive details and pertinent content compared to participants in the separation-prompt condition, but this led to better rather than worse transfer performance. Our results thus suggest diversion, and not disruption, to be the main process driving the seductive details effect. Reducing the details’ diverting potential seems a good way to deal with seductive details in instruction.

Combinations of perceptual fluency and sense-making competencies contribute synergistically to learning gains in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. However, instructional principles depend on the target of instruction, and in many fields, the targets of instruction are quite different from undergraduate STEM education. Professional learning often involves the application of previously acquired conceptual knowledge in a perceptually complex reality. This paper focuses on the field of surgery, specifically the recognition of surgical anatomy, in which the target of instruction is perceptual ability rather than conceptual knowledge. We conducted two experiments in which 42 and 44 surgical trainees participated in perceptual-fluency and sense-making interventions, followed by tests of their ability to recognize surgical anatomy in real operative images. The results showed that perceptual-fluency interventions contributed to gains in perceptual knowledge relating to surgical anatomy, whereas sense-making interventions did not. We discuss our findings in terms of alignment between instructional design and instructional goals, and the application of advances in learning sciences to adult learning of complex skills.

In the past decade, a growing awareness of citizen science, and the potential of school participation in citizen science (SPICES) has developed. At the heart of any SPICES endeavor lies a partnership representing an unconventional blend of ideas, practices, and agendas, grounded in the realms of both educational practice and scientific research. This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue, substantiating SPICES as a field of research, with conceptualization and exploration of opportunities and tensions as main components. We provide an initial roadmap for future research in the field, with four research trajectories: (a) the notion of mutualism, (b) cognitive challenges that students often face, (c) scientific practices that are uniquely afforded in this field, and how students may be supported in developing them, and (d) emerging design guidelines that can help bridge cultural, epistemic, and organizational gaps within SPICES partnerships. By showing how the six empirical papers that make up this special issue exemplify these trajectories, we claim that SPICES fulfills its literal meaning of a small-in-portion, but significant ingredient within educational systems. SPICES holds the promise of making the grand difference in what schooling can offer students, teachers, communities and society.

Students’ strongly positive STEM interest and identity predict their future study and career choices in a STEM field. STEM education studies addressing multiple disciplines together are insufficient, as they have produced mixed findings and inadequate direction for advancing integrated STEM education. Self-determination theory (SDT) provides an understanding of motivational processes that influence the development of STEM interest and identity. This study investigated the effectiveness of a set of proposed teacher needs-supportive strategies on student STEM interest and identity development during a proposed 12-week SDT-based STEM program. Three hundred forty-two ninth grade students were randomly assigned to SDT and non-SDT groups during the program. The results support the application of SDT in integrated STEM learning and explain how supporting student needs affects their STEM interest and identity, which is crucial in interdisciplinary learning and the development of adolescent interest and identity in K–12. Moreover, the results contribute to SDT by adding a new dimension—integrated STEM interest and identity—and presenting more evidence on how the teacher’s needs-supportive strategies foster this dimension. These results have practical implications for advancing integrated STEM education in addition to new opportunities for using fewer resources to effectively foster student interest and identity in compulsory education.

Students benefit from receiving and providing peer feedback, but the degree of participation limits the benefit. Further, students sometimes resist participation, providing few or only short comments. Prior researchers have examined the role of general attitudes toward peer feedback in limiting participation. However, little research has examined how peer feedback experiences predict the subsequent amount of feedback that students provide to peers. Data on peer feedback experiences and behaviors across multiple assignments were taken from students across two psychology courses (N = 360), two biology courses (N = 483), and one astronomy course (N = 170). The zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) regression analyses reveal that receiving fewer critical peer comments in the prior assignment, recognition for higher quality feedback in the prior assignment, and stronger performance on the current assignment predicted higher participation in peer feedback, but norm-setting did not appear to have a role. Implications for practitioners are discussed.

This present study examines the psycho-emotional and psychophysiological effects that variations in the tempo of background music have on learners who are completing reading comprehension tests while being monitored used multi-modal computer technology. Results of seventy-four (N = 74) participants indicated that listening to fast tempo music (150 bpm) predicted lower reading comprehension scores, increased emotional expressions of fear, joy and contempt, and higher skin conductance responses (SCRs). Results indicated that participants were more likely to produce higher scores while listening to slow tempo music (110 bpm), but such findings were not connected to significant differences in facial emotion expressions or psychophysiological responses. Contrasting these were control/no-music conditions in which participants exhibited moderated scores. Results from the fast-tempo condition can possibly be attributed in part to an affective valence of emotions and psychophysiological responses, as the multimodal data suggests that a combined regulatory mechanism may be at play while engaged in a learning task. This paper raises several questions regarding the use and effects of background music in performance-based learning settings and the role of affective-stimuli on cognitive regulation.

Citizen science programs offer opportunities for K-12 students to engage in authentic science inquiry. However, these programs often fall short of including learners as agents in the entire process, and thus contrast with the growing open science movement within scientific communities. Notably, study ideation and peer review, which are central to the making of science, are typically reserved for professional scientists. This study describes the implementation of an open science curriculum that engages high school students in a full cycle of scientific inquiry. We explored the focus and quality of students’ study designs and peer reviews, and their perceptions of open science based on their participation in the program. Specifically, we implemented a human brain and behavior citizen science unit in 6 classrooms across 3 high schools. After learning about open science and citizen science, students (N = 104) participated in scientist-initiated research studies, and then collaboratively proposed their own studies to investigate personally interesting questions about human behavior and the brain. Students then peer reviewed proposals of students from other schools. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of students’ artifacts created in-unit and on a pre and posttest, we describe their interests, abilities, and self-reported experiences with study design and peer review. Our findings suggest that participation in open science in a human brain and behavior research context can engage students with critical aspects of experiment design, as well as with issues that are unique to human subjects research, such as research ethics. Meanwhile, the quality of students’ study designs and reviews changed in notable, but mixed, ways: While students improved in justifying the importance of research studies, they did not improve in their abilities to align methods to their research questions. In terms of peer review, students generally reported that their peers' feedback was helpful, but our analysis showed that student reviewers struggled to articulate concrete recommendations for improvement. In light of these findings, we discuss the need for curricula that support the development of research and review abilities by building on students’ interests, while also guiding students in transferring these abilities across a range of research foci.

Most social challenges fall outside of the authority of any single individual and therefore require collective action—coordinated efforts by many stakeholders to implement solutions. Despite growing interest in teaching students to lead collective action, we lack models for how to teach these skills. Collective action ostensibly involves design: the act of planning to change existing situations into preferred ones. In other domains, instructors commonly scaffold design using an instructional model known as studio critique in which students strengthen their plans by exchanging arguments with peers and instructors. This study explores whether studio critique can serve as the basis for an effective instructional model in collective action. Using design-based research methods, we designed and implemented scoping deliberations, a new instructional model that augments studio critique with domain-specific templates for planning collective action and repeats weekly to enable iterations. We used process tracing to analyze data from field notes, video, and artifacts to evaluate causal explanations for events observed in this case study. By implementing scoping deliberations in a 10-week undergraduate course, we found that this model appeared effective at scaffolding engagement in planning collective action: students articulated and refined their plans by engaging in argumentation and iteration, as expected. However, students struggled to contact the community stakeholders with whom they planned to work. As a result, their plans rested on implausible, untested assertions. These findings advance instructional science by showing that collective action may require new instructional models that help students to test their assertions against feedback from community stakeholders. Practically, scoping deliberations appear most useful for scaffolding thoughtful planning in conditions when students are already collaborating with stakeholders.

Computer-simulated experiments have been gaining popularity over hands-on experiments in science education, given the availability of technology and the trend of distance learning. Past studies have focused primarily on comparing the learning outcomes and user experiences of the two experiment modes. In this study, we used an eye tracker to investigate the learning processes involved in manipulating hands-on and computer-simulated experiments, and the effect of prior knowledge and experiment mode on eye movements. A total of 105 undergraduates completed either mode of experiment to learn about pulley mechanics. Participants were asked to read relevant concepts before conducting the experiments to ensure they had basic knowledge about the subject matter. Results showed that the learning outcome of experimentation was affected by prior knowledge but not experiment mode. As for eye movements, the two experiment workstations were divided into nine functional regions. The findings revealed that eye movements in most regions were affected by the experiment mode, but not prior knowledge. The simulation group had shorter total fixation durations and smaller pupil sizes than the hands-on group, implying a lower cognitive load in learning in computer-simulated experiments. Lag sequential analysis and entropy analysis were conducted on cross-regional fixation transitions. The results revealed that participants in hands-on experiments tended to make more diversified fixation transitions across regions, whereas those in simulated experiments showed a higher level of concentration in the spatial pattern of fixation transitions. While sequential analysis offers insights into important fixation transitions on a regional level, entropy analysis allows for a more macro perspective on the overall transition distribution and facilitates conventional statistical modeling that takes individual differences into account.

Knowledge Building principles such as real ideas, authentic problems; epistemic agency; and collective responsibility for advancement of community knowledge convey ways in which Knowledge Building mirrors work in knowledge-creating communities. Previous studies suggest Metadiscourse—discourse about discourse—helps sustain and improve community knowledge. Do students’ emotions differ during metadiscourse compared to other discourse contexts? Is metadiscourse even possible in early elementary grades? If so, what emotions are associated with discourse moves requiring high-level reflection on prior discourse? Is it possible that such reflection engenders positive emotions required for sustained creative work with ideas? To address these issues, the authors engaged 22 grade 2 students (7 years old) in monthly metadiscourse sessions over four months, during which they discussed how their ideas changed, what they still wondered about, and what ideas they wanted to pursue. Video recordings of face-to-face sessions, online Knowledge Forum notes, students’ interviews, teacher’s reflections, and field notes were analyzed using discourse analysis, multi-faceted coding, and correlation analysis. The authors examined how students’ emotions and discourse moves differ in Knowledge Building discourse and metadiscourse and correlations between emotions and different discourse moves. The results show: (1) greater levels of enjoyment, reflection on previous ideas, and proposals for new directions for inquiry during metadiscourse sessions; (2) confidence positively associated with explanations and proposals for new directions for inquiry; (3) positive emotions associated with increasingly challenging cognitive work. The relationships between early elementary-grade students’ emotions and cognition during Knowledge Building is an underdeveloped area of investigation; in an effort to guide future research a model for regulating emotions in Knowledge Building is presented.

The purpose of this research is to examine whether, and how, an asynchronous online learning community pedagogical approach can address students’ challenge of integrating disciplinary ideas into an interdisciplinary understanding. A quasi-experimental research design was conducted in which 51 undergraduate students were allocated into two groups who learned a similar asynchronous online interdisciplinary course. The two groups differed in the learning mode in which the courses were designed and taught: a learning community (LC) mode for the experimental group, versus an individual learning (IL) mode for the control group. We used a designated rubric to compare the quality of students’ interdisciplinary understanding, as expressed in a synthesis essay each student wrote. Findings show that students’ abilities to synthesize disciplinary ideas were significantly higher in the LC group. Since synthesis of disciplinary ideas is the goal and essence of interdisciplinarity, we view these findings as indicating a higher quality of interdisciplinary understanding among the LC mode students. This work demonstrates and delineates the potential of the LC approach to promote the development of interdisciplinary understanding in higher-education asynchronous online environments.