Improving Tree-Thinking One Learnable Skill at a Time

Introducerande artikel inom Läslyftsmodulen Från Vardagsspråk till ÄmnesspråkIntroduction to language sensitive teaching a s part of a Skolverket professional development module in the program Reading Boost

A cross-national mixed-method study of reality pedagogy

This mixed-methods cross-national study investigated the effectiveness of reality pedagogy (an approach in which teachers become part of students’ activities, practices and rituals) in terms of changes in student perceptions of their learning environment and attitudes towards science. A questionnaire was administered to 142 students in grades 8–10 in the Bronx, New York City and Dresden, Germany. The questionnaire combines learning environment scales from the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey and the What Is Happening In this Class? Questionnaire with attitude scales from the Test of Science-Related Attitudes. Student interviews were used to support questionnaire findings. Quantitative data analyses revealed that reality pedagogy had a greater impact on students in the Bronx than in Dresden, with qualitative data clarifying differences in how reality pedagogy was enacted in each geographic area. Overall, our findings add to the body of evidence concerning the effectiveness of reality pedagogy as an approach to teaching and learning science across a variety of contexts. © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrech

Does explicit problem solving teaching strategy improve pre-service elementary teachers' problem solving ability in Chemistry?

Conference Theme: Re-Imagining Research in 21st Century Science Education for a Diverse Global CommunityThis study compares the effectiveness of two teaching approaches: an inquiry with added ‘Explicit General Problem Solving Teaching Strategy’ (EGPSTS) and traditional inquiry which excludes this EGPSTS on pre-service elementary school teachers’ ability to solve heat transfer problems. The pre-service elementary teachers in this study were enrolled in two sections of chemistry for pre-service elementary teachers’ class at a four year university in spring 2011 semester. One section of this class was taught a treatment method, the explicit general problem solving approach, while the other section was taught an inquiry approach which excluded the explicit problem solving. Quantitative data was obtained using post-tests while qualitative data was obtained using semi-structured interviews. Although there was no statistical difference in the two groups’ performance to the post-test, the treatment group had higher mean percentage than the control group. There was not much difference in the way participants thought through their problems during interviews between the two groups although subjects in the treatment group seemed more organized than their control counterparts. Hence, this study concludes that both EGPSTS and traditional inquiry have comparable effectiveness to teaching problem solving although EGPSTS has a slight edge over traditional inquiry.link_to_OA_fulltex