Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Science and Mathematics Education Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 34

Full-Text Articles in Science and Mathematics Education

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools: Literature And Policy Review, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell May 2018

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools: Literature And Policy Review, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell

Professor Kathryn Moyle (consultant)

This literature and policy review outlines the complex context related to STEM learning in Australian schools and focuses on student outcomes, the teacher workforce and the curriculum. This paper also sheds light on possible policy directions by examining lessons from other countries. STEM education is a broad enterprise that starts in early childhood education, continues through the years of schooling and extends into tertiary education supported by contributions from extracurricular and enrichment activities, science centres and museums. However, the focus in this document is on primary and secondary schooling. Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that …


Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell May 2018

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell

Professor Kathryn Moyle (consultant)

Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that are contributing to one another. Student engagement and performance in STEM are declining, but we do not have the supply of qualified teachers we need to improve learning. The STEM curriculum is unbalanced and fragmented, leading to less interest among students. It is not possible to break out of the downward cycle from within the current system and it requires policy changes that address the issues raised in this report. This means developing well-considered, systemic and joined-up policies that address the following challenges: Improving student outcomes, building the STEM …


Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell May 2018

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell

Dr Paul Weldon

Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that are contributing to one another. Student engagement and performance in STEM are declining, but we do not have the supply of qualified teachers we need to improve learning. The STEM curriculum is unbalanced and fragmented, leading to less interest among students. It is not possible to break out of the downward cycle from within the current system and it requires policy changes that address the issues raised in this report. This means developing well-considered, systemic and joined-up policies that address the following challenges: Improving student outcomes, building the STEM …


Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools: Literature And Policy Review, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell May 2018

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools: Literature And Policy Review, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell

Dr Paul Weldon

This literature and policy review outlines the complex context related to STEM learning in Australian schools and focuses on student outcomes, the teacher workforce and the curriculum. This paper also sheds light on possible policy directions by examining lessons from other countries. STEM education is a broad enterprise that starts in early childhood education, continues through the years of schooling and extends into tertiary education supported by contributions from extracurricular and enrichment activities, science centres and museums. However, the focus in this document is on primary and secondary schooling. Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that …


Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell May 2018

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell

Pru Mitchell

Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that are contributing to one another. Student engagement and performance in STEM are declining, but we do not have the supply of qualified teachers we need to improve learning. The STEM curriculum is unbalanced and fragmented, leading to less interest among students. It is not possible to break out of the downward cycle from within the current system and it requires policy changes that address the issues raised in this report. This means developing well-considered, systemic and joined-up policies that address the following challenges: Improving student outcomes, building the STEM …


Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools: Literature And Policy Review, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell May 2018

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools: Literature And Policy Review, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell

Pru Mitchell

This literature and policy review outlines the complex context related to STEM learning in Australian schools and focuses on student outcomes, the teacher workforce and the curriculum. This paper also sheds light on possible policy directions by examining lessons from other countries. STEM education is a broad enterprise that starts in early childhood education, continues through the years of schooling and extends into tertiary education supported by contributions from extracurricular and enrichment activities, science centres and museums. However, the focus in this document is on primary and secondary schooling. Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that …


Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools: Literature And Policy Review, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell May 2018

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools: Literature And Policy Review, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell

Dr Michael J Timms

This literature and policy review outlines the complex context related to STEM learning in Australian schools and focuses on student outcomes, the teacher workforce and the curriculum. This paper also sheds light on possible policy directions by examining lessons from other countries. STEM education is a broad enterprise that starts in early childhood education, continues through the years of schooling and extends into tertiary education supported by contributions from extracurricular and enrichment activities, science centres and museums. However, the focus in this document is on primary and secondary schooling. Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that …


Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell May 2018

Challenges In Stem Learning In Australian Schools, Michael J. Timms, Kathryn Moyle, Paul R. Weldon, Pru Mitchell

Dr Michael J Timms

Australian STEM education seems caught in a whirlpool of problems that are contributing to one another. Student engagement and performance in STEM are declining, but we do not have the supply of qualified teachers we need to improve learning. The STEM curriculum is unbalanced and fragmented, leading to less interest among students. It is not possible to break out of the downward cycle from within the current system and it requires policy changes that address the issues raised in this report. This means developing well-considered, systemic and joined-up policies that address the following challenges: Improving student outcomes, building the STEM …


Lib 3010 Spring 2018: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort Dec 2017

Lib 3010 Spring 2018: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort

Jan Comfort

Students enrolled in LIB 3010 (a one hour credit-bearing class on patent searching) were asked to submit an image and write a few sentences describing how it represented their experience.


Assessing Journal Quality In Mathematics Education, Samuel Otten, Ryan Andrew Nivens May 2017

Assessing Journal Quality In Mathematics Education, Samuel Otten, Ryan Andrew Nivens

Ryan Andrew Nivens

Excerpt: In this study, we triangulate the rankings in Table 1 with other measures of journal quality offered through database algorithms.


Assessing Journal Quality In Mathematics Education, Ryan Andrew Nivens, Samuel Otten May 2017

Assessing Journal Quality In Mathematics Education, Ryan Andrew Nivens, Samuel Otten

Ryan Andrew Nivens

No abstract provided.


Building Data And Information Literacy In The Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum, Yasmeen Shorish, Barbara A. Reisner Mar 2017

Building Data And Information Literacy In The Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum, Yasmeen Shorish, Barbara A. Reisner

Yasmeen Shorish

The Literature and Seminar sequence at James Madison University has been used to develop the chemistry information literacy skills of chemistry majors for over four decades. These courses have been continually updated to emphasize information literacy skills for the twenty-first century. This chapter describes the methods that have been developed to improve chemical, data and general information literacy at a large, public, primarily undergraduate institution. The focus of the first semester course, described in this chapter, is on skill building rather than teaching specific resources. It is a model of integration and collaboration between chemistry faculty and chemistry librarians. Changes …


Lib 3010 Spring 2017: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort Dec 2016

Lib 3010 Spring 2017: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort

Jan Comfort

Students enrolled in LIB 3010 (a one hour credit-bearing class on patent searching) were asked to submit an image and write a few sentences describing how it represented their experience.


Reasoning About Race And Pedagogy In Two Preservice Science Teachers: A Critical Race Theory Analysis, Douglas B. Larkin, Tanya Maloney, Gail M. Perry-Ryder Dec 2015

Reasoning About Race And Pedagogy In Two Preservice Science Teachers: A Critical Race Theory Analysis, Douglas B. Larkin, Tanya Maloney, Gail M. Perry-Ryder

Douglas B. Larkin

This study describes the experiences of two preservice science teachers as they progress through their respective teacher education programs, and uses critical race theory to examine the manner in which conceptions about race and its pedagogical implications change over time. Using a longitudinal case study method, participants’ conceptual ecologies of race and pedagogy are mapped both before and after student teaching, and each case is analyzed for evidence of conceptual change in these
areas. Findings show that conceptions about race and the pedagogical implications of race changed in ways that likely would have gone undetected in earlier studies because they …


The Advanced Placement Program's Impact On Academic Achievement, Russell T. Warne, Braydon Anderson Jun 2015

The Advanced Placement Program's Impact On Academic Achievement, Russell T. Warne, Braydon Anderson

Russell T Warne

The number of high school students who have taken and passed Advanced Placement (AP) exams has more than doubled since 2000. In this article, we examined whether this increased participation in the AP program has impacted twelfth-grade students' scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics, reading, and U.S. history for all students and for five major ethnic/racial groups: White, Black, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American students. We found that the drastic increase in AP tests taken has coincided with improved NAEP scores in mathematics, but not in reading or U.S. history. We explored possible explanations …


Free-Choice Family Learning: A Literature Review For The National Park Service, Colleen M. Bourque, Ana K. Houseal, Kate M. Welsh, Matthew Wenger Jan 2015

Free-Choice Family Learning: A Literature Review For The National Park Service, Colleen M. Bourque, Ana K. Houseal, Kate M. Welsh, Matthew Wenger

Ana K Houseal

Learning in national parks often occurs in the context of family groups. Understanding the motivations, needs, and outcomes of family groups is critical to engaging a substantial portion of the National Park Service (NPS) audience. This literature review was prompted by an NPS initiative to improve lifelong learning. It explores research about the nature of family learning, factors that influence it, and recommendations for enhancing it. This review uses Falk and Dierking’s (2000) Contextual Model of Learning as a framework for understanding personal, sociocultural, and physical factors that contribute to family learning outcomes in free-choice settings. Recommendations for improving family …


Lib 3010 Spring 2015: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort Dec 2014

Lib 3010 Spring 2015: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort

Jan Comfort

Students enrolled in LIB 3010 (a one hour credit-bearing class on Patent Searching) were asked to submit an image and write a few sentences describing how it represented their experience.


Lib 3010 Fall 2015: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort Dec 2014

Lib 3010 Fall 2015: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort

Jan Comfort

Students enrolled in LIB 3010 (a one hour credit-bearing class on patent searching) were asked to submit an image and write a few sentences describing how it represented their experience.


Thinking Critically About Data Consumption: Creating The Data Credibility Checklist, Lisa Zilinski, Megan R. Sapp Nelson Dec 2014

Thinking Critically About Data Consumption: Creating The Data Credibility Checklist, Lisa Zilinski, Megan R. Sapp Nelson

Lisa Zilinski

As STEM areas increasingly rely on pre-existing data, either to validate or extend the scientific body of knowledge, students who have baseline knowledge of how to find, evaluate, and access data will have an advantage. Accordingly, undergraduate STEM curricula is increasingly focused on research-based group projects that develop professional skills, building the professional portfolio needed for early career scientists, technologists, and engineers. This project works to develop new tools to implement basic data skills within the undergraduate disciplinary curricula. The first step in this process was to identify the competencies that are likely to be needed by those seeking data …


Scientists And Animal Research: Dr. Jekyll Or Mr. Hyde?, Andrew N. Rowan Jun 2014

Scientists And Animal Research: Dr. Jekyll Or Mr. Hyde?, Andrew N. Rowan

Andrew N. Rowan, DPhil

Why is the public so sensitive about the use of a few tens of millions of animals in research when they do not object to killing hundreds of millions of pigs and cows and billions of chickens for our meat diet? Why is animal research considered so bad despite the public's high opinion of science (and scientists)? Perhaps it is the image of the scientist as an objective and cold individual who deliberately inflicts harm (pain, distress, or death) on his (the public image is usually male) innocent animal victims that arouses so much horror and concern. This paper does …


Exploring The Factors That Influence And Motivate Female Students To Enroll And Persist In Collegiate Stem Degree Programs: A Mixed Methods Study, Rosemary L. Edzie May 2014

Exploring The Factors That Influence And Motivate Female Students To Enroll And Persist In Collegiate Stem Degree Programs: A Mixed Methods Study, Rosemary L. Edzie

Rosemary L Edzie

Nationally, the need for an increase in interest, enrollment, and degrees awarded from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degree programs continues to suffer. While students are enrolling in collegiate STEM degree programs, it is not occurring at a rate that meets the workforce demand. In addition to the concern that there is not a sufficient amount of collegiate STEM majors, there is a concern over too few females enrolling and persisting in collegiate STEM degree programs. This mixed methods sequential exploratory research study considered the factors that influence and motivate undergraduate female students to enroll and persist in collegiate …


An Exercise In Institutional Reflection: The Learning Analytics Readiness Instrument (Lari), Kimberly E. Arnold, Steven Lonn, Matthew Pistilli Mar 2014

An Exercise In Institutional Reflection: The Learning Analytics Readiness Instrument (Lari), Kimberly E. Arnold, Steven Lonn, Matthew Pistilli

Matthew Pistilli

While the landscape of learning analytics is relatively well defined, the extent to which institutions are ready to embark on an analytics implementation is less known. Further, while work has been done on measuring the maturity of an institution’s implementation, this work fails to investigate how an institution that has not implemented analytics to date might become mature over time. To that end, the authors developed and piloted a
survey, the Learning Analytics Readiness Instrument (LARI), in an attempt to help institutions successfully prepare themselves for a successfully analytics implementation. The LARI is comprised of 90 items encompassing five factors …


The Aeronautics Education, Research, And Industry Alliance (Aerial) 2002 Report, Brent D. Bowen, Mary M. Fink, Jocelyn S. Nickerson Feb 2014

The Aeronautics Education, Research, And Industry Alliance (Aerial) 2002 Report, Brent D. Bowen, Mary M. Fink, Jocelyn S. Nickerson

Brent Bowen

UNOAI Report 02-7 The NASA Nebraska Space Grant Consortium (NSGC) & EPSCoR programs at the University I of Nebraska at Omaha are involved in a variety of innovative research activities. Such research is supported through the Aeronautics Education, Research, and Industry Alliance (AERIAL) and collaborative seed funds. AERIAL is a comprehensive, mulch-faceted, five year NASA EPSCoR initiative that contributes substantially to the strategic research and technology priorities of NASA while intensifying Nebraska’s rapidly growing aeronautics research and development endeavors. AERIAL includes three major collaborative research teams (CRTs) whose nexus is a common focus in aeronautics research. Each CRT - Small …


Exploring The Factors That Motivate Female Students To Enroll And Persist In A Collegiate Stem Degree Program, Rosemary L. Edzie, Mahmoud Alahmad Nov 2013

Exploring The Factors That Motivate Female Students To Enroll And Persist In A Collegiate Stem Degree Program, Rosemary L. Edzie, Mahmoud Alahmad

Rosemary L Edzie

In the United States, collegiate enrollment in science and engineering programs continues to decline, while European and Asian universities have increased the number of science and engineering graduates. In addition, there is a growing concern over too few females enrolling and persisting in collegiate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degree programs. Through increasing access to pre-collegiate STEM activities, providing a better understanding of STEM career choices, instilling of confidence in math and science, and establishing student and industry based mentoring programs, more female students will enroll and persist in collegiate STEM degree programs. This paper sets to explore the …


An Ethnographic Study: Becoming A Physics Expert In A Biophysics Research Group, Idaykis Rodriguez Jul 2013

An Ethnographic Study: Becoming A Physics Expert In A Biophysics Research Group, Idaykis Rodriguez

Idaykis Rodriguez

Expertise in physics has been traditionally studied in cognitive science, where physics expertise is understood through the difference between novice and expert problem solving skills. The cognitive perspective of physics experts only create a partial model of physics expertise and does not take into account the development of physics experts in the natural context of research. This dissertation takes a social and cultural perspective of learning through apprenticeship to model the development of physics expertise of physics graduate students in a research group. I use a qualitative methodological approach of an ethnographic case study to observe and video record the …


Lib 3010 Spring 2012: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort Dec 2011

Lib 3010 Spring 2012: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort

Jan Comfort

Students enrolled in LIB 3010 (a one hour credit-bearing class on patent searching) were asked to supply an image and write a few sentences describing how it represented their experience.


Misconceptions About “Misconceptions”: Preservice Secondary Science Teachers’ Views On The Value And Role Of Student Ideas., Douglas B. Larkin Dec 2011

Misconceptions About “Misconceptions”: Preservice Secondary Science Teachers’ Views On The Value And Role Of Student Ideas., Douglas B. Larkin

Douglas B. Larkin

There remains a lack of agreement in the field of science education as to whether student “misconceptions” ought to be considered obstacles or resources, and this has implications for the ways in which prospective teachers think about the value of their students’ ideas. This empirical study examines how fourteen preservice secondary science teachers in four different science teacher preparation programs interpreted the rationale for eliciting student ideas. The findings indicate that the preservice teachers in this study showed an increase in recognizing the importance of student ideas, yet not all took the same view of their role and value in …


Lib 3010 Spring 2011: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort Dec 2010

Lib 3010 Spring 2011: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort

Jan Comfort

Students enrolled in LIB 3010 (a one hour credit-bearing class on patent searching) were asked to supply an image and write a few sentences describing how it represented their experience.


A Classroom Teacher's Reflection On Learning Sustainability, Sandra Wooltorton Dec 2006

A Classroom Teacher's Reflection On Learning Sustainability, Sandra Wooltorton

Sandra Wooltorton

In 2004 I taught a class of 31 eleven and twelve year olds in a south-west Western Australian state primary school which I will call Forestdown. After critique and reflection on my 2004 teaching, in 2005 I taught half a day per week at the same school, this time with ten year olds. I used action research (Reason & Bradbury, 2001) to articulate my challenges and to formulate the approach I used to address them. The research context is a prosperous, business-as-usual culture built uupon a foundation of environmental destruction. Even though the children I taught in 2004 performed creditably …


What You Should Know To Survive In Knowledge Societies. On A Semiotic Understanding Of 'Knowledge', Michael H.G. Hoffmann Dec 2004

What You Should Know To Survive In Knowledge Societies. On A Semiotic Understanding Of 'Knowledge', Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Different situations - like school and workplace - demand different forms of knowledge. Even more important, in particular for lifelong learning, are forms of knowledge we need for managing movements between those situations. To develop a better understanding of how to 'navigate' knowledge boundaries, this paper analyzes, firstly, interviews with scientists interpreting familiar and unfamiliar graphs. Our goal is to identify those forms of knowledge that should receive special attention in education. Secondly, the article elaborates - based on Peirce's semiotic - an epistemologically reflected semiotic model to describe the role and conditions of knowledge.