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"Treagust, David F"
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Design and Implementation of an Einsteinian Energy Learning Module
The most famous equation in physics,
E
=
mc
2
, is rarely introduced in middle school physics curricula. Recent research has shown that teaching Einsteinian concepts at the middle school level is feasible and beneficial. This paper analyses an Einsteinian energy teaching module for Year 8 students (13–14 years old), which encompasses the two fundamental energy formulas in modern physics,
E
=
mc
2
and
E
=
hf
. In the context of activity-based learning, the Einsteinian energy module relates to all the forms of energy in traditional school curricula. This study uses a design-based research approach within the Model of Educational Reconstruction framework. Modern experiments, historical events, and educational research helped us identify relevant Einsteinian energy concepts, activities, and assessments. The study included 22 students who participated in nine in-class Einsteinian energy lessons. Analysing results in the post-test showed a 31% mean increase from the pre-test, a clear and significant positive change in students’ conceptual understanding. The results demonstrated students’ ability to deal with very large and small constants of proportionality and physical concepts involved in the module.
Journal Article
Developing deep knowledge by connecting scientific ideas with data through reasoning to support claims
Scientifically literate citizens need to know how to use scientific ideas and crosscutting concepts to determine what counts as evidence to support claims. Research is needed to develop an understanding of how to support students in the endeavor. This study investigates how to support students in developing usable knowledge that they can apply in new situations. Assisting students in developing this usable knowledge includes helping them to make claims and in supporting them to connect scientific ideas with data to show why the data counts as evidence to justify their claims, a critical aspect of scientific reasoning. In this study, learners constructed four iterations of a scientific explanation across time to explain a complex phenomenon, the water quality of a local stream. We examine learners’ emerging understanding of this complex phenomenon as they collect and analyze water quality data. Research reported here explores 1) the change in the level of sophistication of students’use of scientific ideas and crosscutting concepts to make sense of and explain why data counts as evidence, and 2) if and how students adjust their claims over time, as new and sometimes contradictory evidence is obtained. The research shows various trends of student knowledge development over the course of four iterations of the evolving explanation. Results indicate statistically significant differences in students’ understanding of using crosscutting concepts to connect scientific ideas with data to serve as evidence to explain the phenomenon. Results indicate no statistical significance for scientific ideas or connections to scientific ideas as predictive of claims that students made. The research indicates that using an evolving explanation within a 3-dimensional learning environment assists students in developing useable knowledge. Challenges arose when students needed to adjust claims when confronted with new, contradictory evidence.
Journal Article
From Time-Saving to Skill-Building: Reframing Generative AI for Lesson-Planning—A Conceptual Design Paper
Lesson planning is a core professional practice for pre-service teachers, yet opportunities for timely, individualized feedback are frequently constrained by educator workload. While generative AI has the potential to enhance planning processes and expand opportunities for individualized feedback, the provision of comprehensive lesson plans may lead to excessive reliance. This conceptual design paper details the development and theoretical underpinnings of an artificial intelligence-assisted feedback tool that provides self-efficacy-strengthening feedback on lesson plans for pre-service teachers. To promote constructive feedback, the AI-assisted feedback tool integrates principles from educational feedback research and structures feedback to foster teachers’ lesson-planning self-efficacy through mastery-oriented affirmations, vicarious examples, social persuasions, and emotional reassurance. Curriculum alignment is incorporated to support content validity and contextual appropriateness. While the initial implementation of the feedback tool focuses on Western Australian teacher education, an explicit transfer perspective is considered for the German vocational education context. The paper describes the iterative development process that follows a design-based research approach including platform evaluation, internal refinement, and expert review by teacher educators in Western Australia. The resulting system prompt architecture comprises 11 dimensions including general baselines, the interaction between the Lesson Planning Coach and PSTs and the theoretical foundations mentioned above. The tools’ environment, including examples for provided feedback on lesson plans, is presented and discussed. Finally, an outlook is given on the planned empirical research to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool.
Journal Article
Development and validation of an instrument for assessing high-school students’ perceptions of socio-scientific issues-based learning in biology
In this research, we developed and validate an instrument for assessing high-school students’ perceptions of socio-scientific issues (SSI)-based learning in biology. The development of the instrument was carried out using the following four steps: item formulation, content validation, construct validation and reliability calculation. According to an extensive literature review, 28 initial items were formulated for four SSI-based instruction aspects: (1) contextualisation of SSI, (2) student involvement, (3) student attitudes towards SSI-learning and (4) SSI-based learning objectives. Based on the pilot study conducted for construct validation, 24 items were successfully constructed for the four scales and subsequently administered in biology classrooms to 151 students. Factor analysis showed that each of the 24 items had a factor loading at least 0.40 on its own scale and no other scale. Moreover, the four scales accounted for 58.32% of the total variance and the alpha reliability coefficients for the scales ranged from 0.75 to 0.85. According to these findings, the SSI-based Learning Environment Inventory in Biology is valid, reliable and useful.
Journal Article
Einstein's 'happiest thought': Free-fall experiments enhance student learning of Einsteinian gravity in middle school
The demand for improving student interest in science has increased efforts toward teaching Einstein's theory of general relativity in schools. Research has already shown that teaching Einsteinian gravity at the secondary level is feasible, however, appropriate resources must be readily available for science teachers to make Einsteinian gravity part of the school curriculum. This paper addresses student learning through activities that include simple hand-held experiments that help secondary school teachers and their Year 7 students grasp two key concepts that led Einstein to develop his theory of gravity - the speed of gravity and his 'happiest thought' about free-fall and weightlessness. The first experiment allows students to conceptualise the speed of gravity. Three further experiments help them explore free-fall and weightlessness in different situations. We analyse the evolving conceptions of Year 7 students (N = 44) on understanding free-fall in an 8-lesson program that includes these experiments in the third lesson. Improvements in students' understanding over 8 lessons, showed that time and reinforcement were needed to assimilate the concepts. After eight lessons, 86% of students gave an Einsteinian explanation of free-fall.
Journal Article
Supporting the development of scientific understanding when constructing an evolving explanation
We explore how students developed an integrated understanding of scientific ideas and how they applied their understandings in new situations. We examine the incremental development of 7th grade students’ scientific ideas across four iterations of a scientific explanation related to a freshwater system. We demonstrate that knowing how to
make use of
scientific ideas to explain phenomena needs to be learned just as developing integrated understanding of scientific ideas needs to be learned. Students participated in an open-ended, long-term project-based learning unit, constructing one explanation over time to address, “
How healthy is our stream for freshwater organisms and how do our actions on land potentially impact the water quality of the stream?”
The explanation developed over several weeks as new data were collected and analyzed. Students discussed evidence by revisiting scientific ideas and including new scientific ideas. This research investigates two questions: (1) As students engage in writing a scientific explanation over time, to what extent do they develop integrated understanding of appropriate scientific ideas? and (2) When writing about new evidence, do these earlier experiences of writing explanations enable students to make use of new scientific ideas in more sophisticated ways? In other words, do earlier experiences allow students to know how to make use of their ideas in these new situations? The results indicated statistically significant effects. Through various iterations of the explanation students included richer discussion using appropriate scientific ideas. Students were also able to make better use of new knowledge in new situations.
Journal Article
Understanding interactions in face-to-face and remote undergraduate science laboratories: a literature review
This paper reviews the ways in which interactions have been studied, and the findings of such studies, in science education in both face-to-face and remote laboratories. Guided by a systematic selection process, 27 directly relevant articles were analysed based on three categories: the instruments used for measuring interactions, the research findings on student interactions, and the theoretical frameworks used in the studies of student interactions. In face-to-face laboratories, instruments for measuring interactions and the characterisation of the nature of interactions were prominent. For remote laboratories, the analysis of direct interactions was found to be lacking. Instead, studies of remote laboratories were mainly concerned with their practical scope. In addition, it is found that only a limited number of theoretical frameworks have been developed and applied in the research design. Existent theories are summarised and possible theoretical frameworks that may be implemented in studies of interactions in undergraduate laboratories are proposed. Finally, future directions for research on the inter-relationship between student interactions and laboratory learning are suggested.
Journal Article
‘Even though it might take me a while, in the end, I understand it’: a longitudinal case study of interactions between a conceptual change strategy and student motivation, interest and confidence
Although there have been many investigations of the social, motivational, and emotional aspects of conceptual change, there have been few studies investigating the intersection of these factors with cognitive aspects in the regular classroom. Using a conceptual change approach, this case study reports experiences of a student of low to average prior attainment who achieved high levels of conceptual gains in five science topics over a two-year period. Her experience in the cognitive, social and affective domains was probed through analysis of interviews, student artefacts, video recordings of classroom learning, pre/post-tests and questionnaire results. For this student, peripheral or incidental persuasion of belonging to a supportive small group initially led to greater engagement with the construction of understanding through production of multiple student-generated representations, resulting in improved self-confidence and high levels of conceptual change. Evidence of transfer from performance to mastery approach goals, adoption of positive activating emotions and increased interest in science were observed. This study highlights that adoption of a multidimensional conceptual change approach with judicious organisation of small groups to support construction of verbal, pictorial and written representations of understanding may bring about changes in motivational stance, self-confidence and emotions to maximise conceptual change.
Journal Article
An Analysis of the Visual Representation of Redox Reactions in Secondary Chemistry Textbooks from Different Chinese Communities
This study provides an analysis of selected aspects of the intended curriculum related to redox reactions as represented in secondary chemistry textbooks from the People’s Republic of China, with a special view also on Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and the Chinese minority in Malaysia. This study reveals how chemistry textbooks deal with visual representations related to redox reactions and whether or not the visualizations provide any indication for the orientation of the intended curriculum, characterized by contexts suggested for chemistry learning. Specific criteria were derived from a literature review of the discussion on different levels of chemical representations and from a total of 346 visual representations related to redox reactions identified and analyzed from the textbooks. Based on the frequencies and levels of visual representations in the textbooks, this study showed that representations in textbooks from the People’s Republic of China mostly focus on the macro and macro-symbolic levels and indicate some aspects of everyday life as well as orientations towards industry and technology. The findings show that the textbook from Taiwan uses multiple macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic representations to illustrate the redox reactions. The textbook from Hong Kong has a strong orientation along the content structure of chemistry, with mostly macro level representations. The textbook from the Chinese minority in Malaysia follows a strong structure-of-discipline orientation with limited visual support.
Journal Article