234 research outputs found
CIEL:Integrating Approaches for Inquiry Learning
The world is changing and changing fast. Contemporary students live in a world full of impressions, fast changing viewpoints, ubiquitous information, zapping behaviour, play and joy etc. They use facilities such as MSN, on-line gaming, and SMS. They expect a seamless access to information, mostly in a social context. At the same time we see drastic changes in learning environments, moving them to rich, multi-media, collaborative, experiential, and individualised environments. Though starting from different angles, these two developments seem to come together. Modern learning environments such as WISE (Slotta, 2004) or BioLogica (Hickey, Kindfield, Horwitz, & Christie, 2003) combine all kinds of opportunities to learn and communicate in a facilitative setting
Chinese and Dutch mathematics teachers’ beliefs about inquiry-based learning
International audienceTeachers’ beliefs are expected to have impact on the implementation of inquiry-based learning (IBL) in mathematics education. Moreover, Chinese and Dutch teaching cultures in mathematics seem to be very different. This paper presents results from semi-structured interviews with 30 Chinese and 19 Dutch mathematics teachers’ beliefs about IBL. Statements were connected to main codes and ranked for each country. Dutch teachers focused on students’ taking responsibility in IBL while Chinese teachers put extra emphasis on teacher guidance, they also talked about student discussion and collaboration. Chinese teachers paid attention to the benefits of IBL on mathematical thinking while Dutch teachers to the benefits on mastery and appliance of knowledge. In addition to the lack of time and suitable tasks as difficulties, Chinese teachers also mentioned students’ lack of motivation and performance, while Dutch teachers mentioned the demands and openness of IBL
Qualitative, quantitative, and data mining methods for analyzing log data to characterize students' learning strategies and behaviors [discussant]
This symposium addresses how different classes of research methods, all based upon the use of log data from educational software, can facilitate the analysis of students’ learning strategies and behaviors. To this end, four multi-method programs of research are discussed, including the use of qualitative, quantitative-statistical, quantitative-modeling, and educational data mining methods. The symposium presents evidence regarding the applicability of each type of method to research questions of different grain sizes, and provides several examples of how these methods can be used in concert to facilitate our understanding of learning processes, learning strategies, and behaviors related to motivation, meta-cognition, and engagement
Teaching and learning special relativity theory in secondary and lower undergraduate education: A literature review
This review presents an overview and analysis of the body of research on
special relativity theory (SRT) education at the secondary and lower
undergraduate level. There is currently a growing international interest in
implementing SRT in pre-university education as an introduction to modern
physics. For this reason, insights into learning opportunities and challenges
in SRT education are needed. The field of research in SRT education is still at
an early stage, especially at the level of secondary education, and there is a
shortage of empirical evaluation of learning outcomes. In order to guide future
research directions, there is a need for an overview and synthesis of the
results reported so far. We have selected 40 articles and categorized them
according to reported learning difficulties, teaching approaches, and research
tools. Analysis shows that students at all educational levels experience
learning difficulties with the use of frames of reference, the postulates of
SRT, and relativistic effects. In the reported teaching sequences,
instructional materials, and learning activities, these difficulties are
approached from different angles. Some teaching approaches focus on thought
experiments to express conceptual features of SRT, while others use virtual
environments to provide realistic visualization of relativistic effects. From
the reported teaching approaches, three learning objectives can be identified:
to foster conceptual understanding, to foster understanding of the history and
philosophy of science, and to gain motivation and confidence toward SRT and
physics in general. In order to quantitatively compare learning outcomes of
different teaching strategies, a more thorough evaluation of assessment tools
is required
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