Mission to Planet Markle: Problem-Based Learning for Teaching Elementary Students Difficult Content and Practices     

Peffer  Melanie E.  Renken  Maggie  Enderle  Patrick  Cohen  Jonathan 《Research in Science Education》2021,51(5):1365-1389

Research in Science Education - Young children can struggle to learn difficult disciplinary content and important skills for practicing science. Problem-based learning (PBL) may be useful for...  相似文献   

Developing Energy Literacy in US Middle-Level Students Using the Geospatial Curriculum Approach     

Alec M. Bodzin  Qiong Fu  Tamara E. Peffer  Violet Kulo 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(9):1561-1589

This quantitative study examined the effectiveness of a geospatial curriculum approach to promote energy literacy in an urban school district and examined factors that may account for energy content knowledge achievement. An energy literacy measure was administered to 1,044 eighth-grade students (ages 13–15) in an urban school district in Pennsylvania, USA. One group of students received instruction with a geospatial curriculum approach (geospatial technologies (GT)) and another group of students received ‘business as usual’ (BAU) curriculum instruction. For the GT students, findings revealed statistically significant gains from pretest to posttest (p?<?0.001) on knowledge of energy resource acquisition, energy generation, storage and transport, and energy consumption and conservation. The GT students had year-end energy content knowledge scores significantly higher than those who learned with the BAU curriculum (p?<?0.001; effect size being large). A multiple regression found that prior energy content knowledge was the only significant predictor to the year-end energy content knowledge achievement for the GT students (p?<?0.001). The findings support that the implementation of a geospatial curriculum approach that employs learning activities that focus on the spatial nature of energy resources can improve the energy literacy of urban middle-level education students.  相似文献   

Examining the Effect of Enactment of a Geospatial Curriculum on Students’ Geospatial Thinking and Reasoning   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Alec M. Bodzin  Qiong Fu  Violet Kulo  Tamara Peffer 《Journal of Science Education and Technology》2014,23(4):562-574

A potential method for teaching geospatial thinking and reasoning (GTR) is through geospatially enabled learning technologies. We developed an energy resources geospatial curriculum that included learning activities with geographic information systems and virtual globes. This study investigated how 13 urban middle school teachers implemented and varied the enactment of the curriculum with their students and investigated which teacher- and student-level factors accounted for students’ GTR posttest achievement. Data included biweekly implementation surveys from teachers and energy resources content and GTR pre- and posttest achievement measures from 1,049 students. Students significantly increased both their energy resources content knowledge and their GTR skills related to energy resources at the end of the curriculum enactment. Both multiple regression and hierarchical linear modeling found that students’ initial GTR abilities and gain in energy content knowledge were significantly explanatory variables for their geospatial achievement at the end of curriculum enactment, p < .001. Teacher enactment factors, including adherence to implementing the critical components of the curriculum or the number of years the teachers had taught the curriculum, did not have significant effects on students’ geospatial posttest achievement. The findings from this study provide support that learning with geospatially enabled learning technologies can support GTR with urban middle-level learners.  相似文献