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Full-Text Articles in Education
Mission To Planet Markle: Problem-Based Learning For Teaching Elementary Students Difficult Content And Practices, Melanie Peffer, Maggie Renken, Patrick Enderle, Jonathan Cohen
Mission To Planet Markle: Problem-Based Learning For Teaching Elementary Students Difficult Content And Practices, Melanie Peffer, Maggie Renken, Patrick Enderle, Jonathan Cohen
Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
Young children can struggle to learn difficult disciplinary content and important skills for practicing science. Problem-based learning (PBL) may be useful for addressing such difficulties, yet evidence to support its usefulness in elementary school-aged children is limited. We considered the role of a PBL unit in improving students’ genetics content understanding and their skills specific to creating arguments with coordinated claims, evidence, and reasoning. First- through fifth-grade students participated in a six-week PBL unit about evolution and genetics. Students worked in mixed age groups and were charged with illustrating a fictitious alien species, called markles, based on a series of …
Improving Argumentation Through Goal Instructions In Asynchronous Online Discussions, Yekaterina Prudchenko
Improving Argumentation Through Goal Instructions In Asynchronous Online Discussions, Yekaterina Prudchenko
STEMPS Theses & Dissertations
Argumentation incorporated into class discussions can improve students' problem solving skills and enhance their epistemic and conceptual understanding. Research indicates students sometimes need scaffolding such as goal instructions to improve their argumentation skills. This study examined the effectiveness of different types of goal instructions on participants' argumentation achievement. In particular, the study compared the effects of minimal, moderate, substantial, and no goal instructions in asynchronous online discussions on participants' argumentation achievement, as measured by development, balance, and explanatory discourse scores. The study also tried to understand participants' experiences of the goal instructions by comparing the differences in emergent themes across …