Instructional Science

The effectiveness of science problem-based learning (PBL) is highly dependent on individual students’ variability. Researchers have shown the need for cognition (NFC) and motivation are significant factors. Despite the acknowledged impact of these constructs, there is a gap in understanding the relationships among NFC, motivation, and learning outcomes in science PBL for diverse students. To fill this gap, we conducted a correlational study in the southwestern United States and examined the influence of NFC on middle school students’ (n = 478) motivation and learning outcomes in science PBL, taking into account their varying NFC levels (measured by Cacioppo et al., 1984), motivation (measured by Ryan & Deci, 2000), race, and gender. Confirmatory factor analysis, two-step structural equation modeling (SEM), and multigroup SEM were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that NFC played a critical role in boosting motivation for both science learning in general and science PBL, ultimately leading to improved science knowledge. However, the direct link between motivation specific to science PBL and knowledge gains was statistically nonsignificant, suggesting other unmeasured factors may also influence how science PBL influences learning outcomes. Additionally, the significant impact of NFC on motivation for science learning was detected in the high NFC group but not in the low NFC group. Regarding the possible moderation of race and gender factors, only race showed a partial moderation effect. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how NFC, motivation, and socio-demographic factors influence learning outcomes, offering directions that may foster more inclusive and effective science education strategies.

The multiple methods study was utilized to determine the following: (1) the relationship between reading/special education teachers’ instruction of processes designed to engage readers in thinking about what they read, (2) students’ use of the processes, and (3) comprehension development. This was followed by qualitatively examining performance utilizing contingent teaching and the self-direction dimension, and student application of 8 students. This is the first study to assess all three jointly. Moreover, this study is the first to examine instructional scaffolding of the engaged reader process in such depth. The study examined planned and interactional scaffolding in comprehension. Fidelity of implementation ratings and percentage of time allocated to the instruction of engaged reader processes were examined to see if they predicted comprehension post-test scores for 85 students. Adding the variables of instructional time and fidelity only increased the explanation of the variance by 2%, a total of 27% with the control variables. Qualitative results displayed the importance of explicit instruction in domain information on how and why engaged reader processes should be used. Additionally, providing feedback on domain information was a key ingredient in effective scaffolding.

Research review articles over the years have established that studies on teaching critical thinking suffer from methodological and theoretical deficiencies, making results unreliable. The methods have been criticized for not handling threats to internal validity (designs without control groups or proper randomization) and the theories have been criticized for conceptual vagueness. To address this, the study reported on here developed an experimentally robust intervention design to test a new theory for teaching critical thinking—the variation theory of learning and teaching. This theory focuses on opening up new aspects of the world for the learner through systematic variation in these aspects. In this study, an aspect of critical thinking was targeted: the aspect of alternating points of view on societal issues. 92 Swedish 9th grade students and 5 social studies teachers from a school in the commuting area of Gothenburg were randomly assigned to treatment, i.e. variation-theory-based teaching, and control group, i.e. “business-as-usual” teaching. The results were measured through essay tasks, in pre- and post-tests, showing significant gains in alternating points of view in favour of the treatment group, both on the issues taught and novel issues, i.e. transfer. The results suggest that, when put to the test in a methodologically robust intervention, variation theory is a powerful theory for teaching critical thinking, and in addition, it offers a way to theoretically explain the teaching and learning taking place. This suggests a need for further exploration of the theory in relation to research on and teaching of critical thinking.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that the retrieval of information through testing can enhance long term memory. Data has been less clear concerning the utility of concept mapping as an alternative retrieval practice technique. The study described here extended that research by matching the time for different study conditions, by utilizing matched questions during study across retrieval practice conditions, and by examining performance on transfer tasks, including far transfer. Seventy-five participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) Re-Study: rereading the same information, (2) Retrieval Practice: answering questions on the reading material, and (3) Retrieval-based concept mapping: drawing a concept map responding to the same questions. During study, participants in the Retrieval Practice condition scored higher on responses to initial recall questions than those in the Concept Map condition. However, on the final transfer test a week later, Retrieval Practice and Concept Map conditions both resulted in higher performance than Re-Study, supporting concept mapping as an additional option for retrieval practice as a robust learning strategy for long term retention and transfer.

This study examined the moment-by-moment reciprocal relationships between teachers’ instructional moves and students’ social reasoning during collaborative small-group discussions. Social reasoning refers to students’ justification of knowledge and understanding of complex issues from the social world. Participants included 131 fifth-grade students and their teachers from two public schools. Students and teachers engaged in six weekly collaborative small group discussions. Students’ social reasoning and teachers’ instructional moves were coded from 24 discussions that occurred in the middle of the intervention. Statistical discourse analysis revealed that teachers’ high-level prompting, specific praise, and management moves immediately triggered students’ social reasoning, while specific praise and high-level prompting triggered social reasoning in later turns. Conversely, students’ social reasoning was less likely to be followed by teachers’ high-level prompting but was more likely to be followed by teachers’ use of specific praise. The findings extend our understanding of teacher-student interactions during the collaborative small-group discussion as a dynamic process driven by various pragmatic purposes.

This study examined how a middle school mathematics teacher implemented formative assessment lessons and how the classroom gradually transformed into an environment that encourages students' participation in mathematical discourse practices. Data were collected through year-long observations of a seventh-grade mathematics classroom and interviews. Using a discourse practice framework, the study analyzed the verbal interactions between the teacher and students. The findings draw a picture of the evolving dynamics of mathematical discourse, where students increasingly mirrored the teacher’s talk patterns and engaged in mathematical practices. The data suggest that while the teacher made efforts to develop discourse practices, the class exhibited varying levels of mathematical discourse, with more engagement in discourse occurring during closing sessions compared to opening sessions. These findings highlight the teacher’s important role in shaping students’ collective mathematical communication and the importance of strategically implementing discussions throughout different phases of a lesson to support students’ mathematical reasoning and cultivate discourse practices within the classroom community.

Despite the challenges posed by expository instruction materials, including unfamiliar text structure and abstracted and isolated representation of the contents, they constitute a primary means of studying scientific concepts in higher education. Conversely, utilizing narratives to present the to-be-learned content was conjectured to mitigate some of these limitations. Yet, empirical evidence at the undergraduate level remains inconclusive. In this design-based research experimental study, we examined the effects of expository and narrative instruction on the recall, understanding, and transfer of core biological concepts among 109 undergraduate natural science students. Moreover, we investigated diverse affective and cognitive mechanisms that may be differently influenced by the instruction. To enhance our analyses beyond traditional significance testing, we conducted complementary bootstrapped effect size comparisons and Bayesian analyses to be able to additionally quantify the results, estimate the uncertainty of the findings, and incorporate means to compensate for potential violations of normality and homogeneity assumptions. We found that learning with narratives resulted in higher knowledge transfer. Further, there was tentative evidence that students with less prior biology knowledge may benefit more from narrative instruction concerning understanding and recall, while expository materials appeared to rather support those with more background in biology. Furthermore, examining the learning mechanisms revealed that narratives may lead to higher self-efficacy and more effective working memory resource allocation. There was also some evidence for higher levels of satisfaction, cognitive engagement, and situational interest with less prior knowledge and narrative instruction. In contrast, the learning mechanism-related results for students with more prior biology education were comparable when reading the expository text. Overall, the study offers preliminary insights into when and why narratives might be better suited to teach scientific concepts than expository texts, also in light of closing achievement gaps in education, but underscores the need for additional research in this field.

In recent years, more science classrooms include inquiry-based approaches to learning in response to advances in education theory and science curriculum reform efforts. Yet, extant research indicates there are hurdles to fully actualizing those benefits: learners’ regulation of cognitive, social, and motivational processes can be challenging. To help clarify processes implicated in inquiry-based science learning, the current study integrated developmental psychology research on adolescents’ peer relationships and friendships to investigate early adolescents’ understandings of the role of peer social relationships and friendships in collaboration in middle school inquiry classrooms. We thematically analyzed 32 interviews with 7th grade students from a U.S. middle school. Interviews occurred at the end of a semester-long inquiry-based curriculum implementation designed to promote authentic inquiry and argumentation. Results suggest that early adolescents primarily viewed both peer relationships generally and friendships specifically as beneficial to prosocial behaviors such as helping and ensuring fair consideration of one’s ideas, supporting argumentation, and supporting motivation by minimizing the adverse impact of competence and peer group belonging concerns on learning and promoting group cohesion. Early adolescents viewed peers as important resources regarding accessing alternative perspectives, explanations, and counterarguments. Early adolescents also distinguished between types of friends, favoring those who support group function and noting greater prosocial behavior with friends than other peers in collaboration. Findings suggest a need to develop scaffolds to counteract favoritism toward friends and status problems, as well as intervention on broader school norms to support forms of motivation that are conducive to inquiry dialogues.

Debriefing sessions play a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of simulations for learning in professional education and training. In this paper, we focus on post-game debriefing sessions in military officer education, where wargames are used with the goal of enhancing students’ understanding of military tactics. The central focus of this article is how the concept of tactics is used in the debriefings. The study was undertaken at the Swedish Defence University, where video data were collected from a variety of wargaming-based tactics courses for navy and marine cadets (officer students). Using a microethnographic approach, we analyze a set of video-recorded post-wargaming debriefing sessions. In the examination of the practical reasoning present in the discussions, we find that participants engage with the concept of tactics in three main ways: (1) Delineating it from other forms of related but separate areas of military knowledge (such as team communication and leadership); (2) as part of “tactical reflections” on specific events in the game, by both students and teachers; and (3) as a generalizable and transferable military skill. The adversarial nature of wargaming plays a significant role, where the goal of creating dilemmas for the opponent is important throughout. Knowledge of tactics is found to not be transparently communicated through participation in the wargame, but to require unpacking in reflective discussions. The analyses show how the concept of tactics is articulated by teachers and appropriated in students’ post-game reasoning. We discuss these findings in terms of conceptual socialization.

The reflection on previous performance during debriefing plays an important role in learning from simulations. While debriefings are traditionally held as verbal debriefings (VD), advancements in video and software technology led to an increased use of video-assisted debriefings (VAD). Although VAD is nowadays considered to be the gold standard, prior research has found mixed results concerning the experiences connected to this form of debriefing. This study sheds light on the experiences of all the actors involved in the process, by including both participants and facilitators. A distinction between their experiences within VD, lower-tech and high-tech VAD was made. In total, 42 mountain rescuers and five facilitators participated in this study during three one-day-long simulation trainings. While participants shared their experiences in focus group interviews, the facilitators were invited for individual interviews. The results indicate that both participants and facilitators preferred high-tech VAD for its ability to objectively review their performance in detail. It was seen as beneficial to gain a deeper understanding of how mistakes occurred during the simulation and the visualisation improved the acceptance of feedback. However, it has also been found that VAD in general can be intrusive and cause additional cognitive demand, stress, and unpleasant emotions. The study shows that VAD can have advantages over VD but requires careful implementation by the facilitators to prevent the possible drawbacks.

The aim of this study is to find out what the effects of facilitated learning interventions in a simulation game (SG) are and what type of SG renders which type of learning. Therefore, we research the effects of facilitator interventions on learning in an analogue open SG (in which there are as few rules as possible) and an analogue rule based SG (in which every decision is rule based). In both SGs the learning goal was to increase participants’ adaptivity to changes in their environment. Qualitative coding was used to trace which interventions rendered which learning results during two reflective moments in the two SGs. The open SG mainly results in second order learning (process) and third order learning (learning to learn and how to add value from your role). The rule based SG rendered mainly first order learning (content/procedural), and second order learning (process level). Participants perceived the rule-based serious game as demanding, as learning and applying its procedures and rules often hindered them from investing their efforts in achieving their learning goals. This extraneous cognitive load triggered both participants and facilitators into more first order responses leading to a less optimal learning environment. Open SGs are more likely to provide opportunities for third order interventions, resulting in third order learning.

Participation in citizen science enables students to gain authentic research experience through collaboration with expert scientists. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate how the interactions between expert scientists and student citizen scientists were mediated through the collaborative investigation and co-creation of knowledge artifacts within a computer supported collaborative learning environment. Approximately 38 elementary students participated in a public citizen science project at the end of a school year. Their data (posts, comments, and photos) were downloaded for a post-hoc analysis. A mixed methods design, which merged quantitative SNA analyses and contextualized qualitative descriptions, provided an understanding of the interactions on the site. This analysis found that discussions related to knowledge artifacts that were novel or unexpected engaged a higher number of participants, but that the quality of scientific discussion was not related to the level of engagement. Expert scientists fulfilled a crucial role in generating scientific discussions about the artifacts. Students appeared to play moderating roles by asking questions and making assertions. However, they also were sometimes sidetracked by non-scientific interactions. The use of citizen science projects shows promise in engaging students in authentic research and providing a platform for expert scientists to demonstrate science practices for students. Recommendations for future research are offered to further enhance scientific discussions between all participants.

This study investigates how vocational education and training prepares students for future professions characterized by technological advancements and demands for sustainability and innovation. Specifically, it examines simulator-based learning in the Natural Resource Program at three upper secondary schools in Sweden. Using a sociomaterial perspective, the study aims to investigate the strategies used by the participants (both students and teachers) in a simulated activity to make sense of the task at hand when dealing with different kinds of situations and activities therein, and in what ways these may be conducive to the development of vocational knowledge. An ethnographic approach is used, employing various methodological tools to create rich datasets, including observations, video recordings, and fieldnotes. The focus is on teachers’ feedback, students’ questions, and task handling during simulation-based training. The analysis explores the relationships between these environments and how feedback and assessment practices affect students’ task performance. When dealing with simulation-based learning in the context of this study, the instructional processes seem to involve, rather than handling specific high-stakes and risky situations, the design of activities that aim at volume training. These activities are entangled with the training sessions included in the simulators but also with other practices and environments. We argue that the instructional work of the vocational teacher deals with making sense of how such entanglements work and are conducive to learning on the one hand, but also to making choices that imply unravelling such entanglements and keeping the worlds apart to put them back together again.

In the literature, there is a general assumption that teachers teach more effectively during team teaching compared with solo teaching. Although effective teaching behaviour is imperative for students’ academic outcomes, only scarce research exists on this difference. Therefore, it remains mainly unknown whether teachers teach more effectively during team teaching compared with solo teaching. This study aims to address this gap by providing a general picture of the differences in teachers’ self-reported effective teaching behaviour during solo teaching and team teaching. To achieve this, a large-scale cross-sectional survey study was performed among teachers (n = 453) in compulsory education. The SET questionnaire was administered to teachers who team teach. Overall, results show that teachers reported to be more capable of displaying effective teaching behaviour during team teaching compared with solo teaching. Furthermore, results show a positive relationship between teachers’ self-reported effective teaching behaviour and education type, teaching experience, and with team teaching percentage.

Enhancing students’ conceptual understanding and improving their inquiry skills and motivation for learning science are the goals of science instruction in learning environments. The current study investigated how different inquiry-based learning environments (regular classroom and computer-based environments) affect middle school students’ conceptual understanding of force and energy, inquiry skills, and motivation for learning science. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest research design was used, with a total of 306 seventh-grade participants. A conceptual understanding test, an inquiry skills test, a motivation scale, and interviews were used to gather data. The findings revealed that the students in the computer-based learning environments showed significantly greater improvement than their counterparts in regular classroom environments in terms of conceptual understanding and inquiry skills. However, there was no meaningful difference in their motivation for learning science. Furthermore, the number of misconceptions about the topic of force and energy held by the students who learned in computer-based learning environments was relatively high. Possible reasons for the results including the advantages of instructional technologies, students’ inquiry abilities, and factors affecting motivation are discussed.

As the demands of society are changing, a continuous adaptation of modules is needed on what to teach, how it should be taught, and ways to assess it. Therefore, the aim was to investigate how to constructively align learning outcomes, teaching-and-learning activities, and assessment tasks of a mathematics methodology module. The sample consisted of three mathematics teacher educators and 42 mathematics pre-service teachers purposively selected from a South African university. This qualitative study adopted the three phases of design-based research (DBR) (preliminary, teacher experiment, and retrospective) to collect data from learning guides, literature, surveys, and online reflections. Qualitative data were inductively coded, whereafter responses were quantified at a descriptive level. The findings revealed six learning outcomes sequenced from lower to higher levels of understanding, comprising affective, psychological, epistemological, pedagogical, curricular, and sociological dimensions. Eight teaching-and-learning activities allowed mathematics pre-service teacher involvement in achieving the learning outcomes. These activities were evaluated through various assessment tasks that mirrored the learning outcomes. This alignment provides information about knowledge, skills, and values to consider in preparing mathematics pre-service teachers for the teaching profession. This study contributes to existing studies on constructive alignment (CA) by showing how the phases of DBR can assist in redesigning a mathematics methodology module, simultaneously enhancing theory and practice, and so paving the way for course amendments to improve learning in diverse contexts. This study opens doors for further investigation in establishing design principles for implementing CA in university-level modules.