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Supporting reading in grades 6-12 : a guide
\"This book presents a curricular framework for students grades 6-12 that school librarians and teachers can use collaboratively to enhance reading skill development, promote literature appreciation, and motivate young people to incorporate reading into their lives beyond simply being required schoolwork\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Analysis of the Decline in Interest Towards School Science and Technology from Grades 5 Through 11
Interest in school science and technology (S&T) remains an important issue as it is linked to achievement and the intention to pursue studies or careers in S&T. Around the world, a number of studies have shown that interest in S&T declines with school years. However, some divergences from the general trend have been demonstrated in certain contexts, sub-periods, or for closely related subconstructs. We administered 2,628 questionnaires to students in grades 5 through 11 in the province of Québec, Canada. The questionnaire explored many factors (including out-of-school and school-related preferences, difficulty, importance, frequency), allowing us to track these closely related variables for a seven-year period. Among others, the results show a general degradation in-school S&T factors but an improvement in out-of-school S&T variables and of interest in S&T studies and careers. S&T is perceived as increasingly difficult and valuable compared with all other subject matters taken one-on-one. Some shorter fluctuations are analysed and interpreted in comparison with the evolution of certain teaching practices.
Journal Article
Defining Computational Thinking for Mathematics and Science Classrooms
Science and mathematics are becoming computational endeavors. This fact is reflected in the recently released Next Generation Science Standards and the decision to include \"computational thinking\" as a core scientific practice. With this addition, and the increased presence of computation in mathematics and scientific contexts, a new urgency has come to the challenge of defining computational thinking and providing a theoretical grounding for what form it should take in school science and mathematics classrooms. This paper presents a response to this challenge by proposing a definition of computational thinking for mathematics and science in the form of a taxonomy consisting of four main categories: data practices, modeling and simulation practices, computational problem solving practices, and systems thinking practices. In formulating this taxonomy, we draw on the existing computational thinking literature, interviews with mathematicians and scientists, and exemplary computational thinking instructional materials. This work was undertaken as part of a larger effort to infuse computational thinking into high school science and mathematics auricular materials. In this paper, we argue for the approach of embedding computational thinking in mathematics and science contexts, present the taxonomy, and discuss how we envision the taxonomy being used to bring current educational efforts in line with the increasingly computational nature of modern science and mathematics.
Journal Article
Why Students Choose STEM Majors: Motivation, High School Learning, and Postsecondary Context of Support
This study draws upon social cognitive career theory and higher education literature to test a conceptual framework for understanding the entrance into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors by recent high school graduates attending 4-year institutions. Results suggest that choosing a STEM major is directly influenced by intent to major in STEM, high school math achievement, and initial postsecondary experiences, such as academic interaction and financial aid receipt. Exerting the largest impact on STEM entrance, intent to major in STEM is directly affected by 12th-grade math achievement, exposure to math and science courses, and math self-efficacy beliefs—all three subject to the influence of early achievement in and attitudes toward math. Multiple-group structural equation modeling analyses indicated heterogeneous effects of math achievement and exposure to math and science across racial groups, with their positive impact on STEM intent accruing most to White students and least to under-represented minority students.
Journal Article
Promoting Interest and Performance in High School Science Classes
We tested whether classroom activities that encourage students to connect course materials to their lives will increase student motivation and learning. We hypothesized that this effect will be stronger for students who have low expectations of success. In a randomized field experiment with high school students, we found that a relevance intervention, which encouraged students to make connections between their lives and what they were learning in their science courses, increased interest in science and course grades for students with low success expectations. The results have implications for the development of science curricula and theories of motivation.
Journal Article
Organizing for Teacher Agency in Curricular Co-Design
Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) approaches to intervention aim for transformative agency, that is, collective actions that expand and bring about new possibilities for activity. In this article, we draw on CHAT as a resource for organizing design research that promotes teachers' agency in designing new science curriculum materials. We describe how CHAT informed our efforts to structure a collaborative design space in which teachers and other participants sought to develop new curriculum materials intended to help realize a new vision for science education. Specifically, we describe the tools and routines we deployed to support the design process, and we analyze the ways in which teachers took up elements of our design process as well as how they adapted, resisted, and suggested alternative tools and strategies to help develop new curriculum materials. In so doing, we illustrate ways in which CHAT can serve as a guide both for organizing collaborative design processes and for analyzing their efficacy.
Journal Article
Teaching and Learning About Complex Systems in K–12 Science Education: A Review of Empirical Studies 1995–2015
The study of complex systems has been highlighted in recent science education policy in the United States and has been the subject of important real-world scientific investigation. Because of this, research on complex systems in K–12 science education has shown a marked increase over the past two decades. In this systematic review, we analyzed 75 empirical studies to determine whether the research (a) collectively represents the goals of educational policy and realworld science, (b) has considered a variety of settings and populations, and (c) has demonstrated systematic investigation of interventions with a view to scale. Results revealed needs in five areas of research: a need to diversify the knowledge domains within which research is conducted, more research on learning about system states, agreement on the essential features of complex systems content, greater focus on contextual factors that support learning including teacher learning, and a need for more comparative research.
Journal Article
Explanatory Modeling in Science Through Text-Based Investigation: Testing the Efficacy of the Project READI Intervention Approach
This article reports the results of a randomized control trial of a semester-long intervention designed to promote ninth-grade science students' use of text-based investigation to create explanatory models of biological phenomena. The main research question was whether the student participants in the intervention outperformed the students in the control classes, as assessed by several measures of comprehension and application of information to modeling biological phenomena not covered in the instruction. A second research question examined the impact on the instructional practices of the teachers who implemented the intervention. Multilevel modeling of outcome measures, controlling for preexisting differences at individual and school levels, indicated significant effects on the intervention students and teachers relative to the controls. Implications for classroom instruction and teacher professional development are discussed.
Journal Article
Teachers' formative assessment abilities and their relationship to student learning: findings from a four-year intervention study
The teaching practices of recognizing and responding to students' ideas during instruction are often called formative assessment, and can be conceptualized by four abilities: designing formative assessment tasks, asking questions to elicit student thinking, interpreting student ideas, and providing feedback that moves student thinking forward. While these practices have been linked to positive learning outcomes for students, designing and enacting formative assessment tasks in science classrooms presents instructional challenges for teachers. This paper reports on the results of a long-term study of high school biology teachers who participated in a 3 year professional development program, called the Formative Assessment Design Cycle (FADC), which guided them to iteratively design, enact, and reflect upon formative assessments for natural selection in school-based teacher learning communities. Nine teachers participated for three academic years; sources of data included teachers' interpreting of student ideas in line with a learning progression, the formative assessment tasks they designed each year of the study, video-taped classroom enactment of those tasks, and pre-post test student achievement from the Baseline and final year of the study. Results indicate that, on average, teachers increased on all abilities during the study and changes were statistically significant for interpreting students ideas, eliciting questions, and feedback. HLM models showed that while only the quality of feedback was a significant predictor at Baseline, it was teachers' task design and interpretation of ideas in Year 3. These results suggest the efficacy of the FADC in supporting teachers' formative assessment abilities. Findings are interpreted in light of professional development and formative assessment literatures.
Journal Article
Next Generation Science Standards
Next Generation Science Standards identifies the science all K-12 students should know. These new standards are based on the National Research Council's A Framework for K-12 Science Education . The National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Achieve have partnered to create standards through a collaborative state-led process. The standards are rich in content and practice and arranged in a coherent manner across disciplines and grades to provide all students an internationally benchmarked science education.
The print version of Next Generation Science Standards complements the nextgenscience.org website and:
Provides an authoritative offline reference to the standards when creating lesson plans
Arranged by grade level and by core discipline, making information quick and easy to find
Printed in full color with a lay-flat spiral binding
Allows for bookmarking, highlighting, and annotating
eBook