An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Climate Change Issue and Implications for Teaching STEM Through Inquiry

The importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, and teaching through an inquiry approach, are critical facets in education today. The purpose of this chapter is to share useful observations and recommendations about teaching STEM through inquiry for practicing teachers. Three cases are used to collect data about participant interactions with an interdisciplinary activity related to climate change, human population growth, and atmospheric pollution (e.g., greenhouse gases and smog). Fifty-five participants, most of whom were pre-service teachers, completed a technology-rich activity, post-test assessment, and survey about the experience. The findings discussed include research results, the perspectives of the facilitating instructor, and recommendations for teaching technology-laden investigations through an inquiry approach. In general, the challenges related to teaching with technology and time constraints were found to be significant limiting factors in the success of inquiry-based teaching in STEM.

Motivating Inquiry-Based Learning Through a Combination of Physical and Virtual Computer-Based Laboratory Experiments in High School Science

This chapter presents research about a combination of physical experimentation (PE) and virtual experimentation (VE) in computer-based inquiry learning as an instructional value to students' affective domain. For this study, the author has developed a science lesson for promoting interactive inquiry learning, and the researcher investigated whether orchestrating PE and VE in sequential learning affect students' learning perception and science motivation. To evaluate the lesson, questionnaires were used to examine how students perceived the lesson and their perceptions about how the lesson promotes science motivation. The results indicated students' positive perceptions that experiencing the lesson supported cognitive performance, emotional practice, and the social inquiry process. In addition, exposure to the lesson improved students' science motivation for both females and males. This highlights that the combination is an effective way to enhance the effectiveness of high school science learning.

Serious Educational Games (SEGs) and Student Learning and Engagement With Scientific Concepts

Situated in the video game design literature to foster problem-based learning, this chapter illustrates the application of educational theories to create Serious Educational Games (SEGs). SEGs present a learning condition where students can be engaged in standard-based STEM concepts and incorporate these concepts into a fun, interactive challenge where the goal is to solve a problem. This chapter explores a theoretical research investigation of such a learning environment. Students researched standard-based STEM concepts then used design techniques (i.e., story creation, flow chart, decision trees, and storyboarding techniques) and proprietary software to develop their own SEGs. This work sheds light on the process and encourages others to partake in creating similar learning environments, while providing insight into how to design for sustainability.

Preservice Teachers Exploring the Nature of Science in Simulated Worlds

This article reports an investigation of preservice teachers' interactions with a computer simulation designed to allow them to explore the nature and practices of science. Participants included 188 preservice, secondary-level, science and mathematics teachers who were enrolled in one of seven consecutive semesters in a professional development course as part of the teacher certification program at a large research university. Artifacts, including articles published in an online journal, responses to focus questions, reflections on the activity, as well as audio and video recordings of the activities themselves, were analyzed following a grounded approach. The simulation activities qualified in many respects as authentic science as identified by . Further, what these activities revealed about student beliefs in regard to the nature and practice of science correlated with their reactions toward the simulation and their views of how it might be used in high school classes.

Contextual Influences on Science Teachers' TPACK Levels

The contextual factors influencing teachers' use of technology as well as teachers' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) levels were investigated through multiple embedded case studies of five science teachers who were regular users of technology in their teaching. The case studies reported in this chapter revealed that teachers used technology to support inquiry learning through a wide range of ways in lower levels of high school but mostly to clarify concepts and theories for senior level students. This chapter identified that teachers demonstrated different TPACK levels of expertise and engagement in the use of technology when transferring different types of knowledge from one teaching and learning context to another and for addressing differences amongst learners. The context of assessment driven teaching influences science teachers' TPACK for integrating technology in instruction. The chapter noted that having teachers actively evaluate the effectiveness of the technology on students' learning may help increase teachers' TPACK levels.

Local Lotto

Local Lotto is a 14-session curriculum designed for high school students to learn mathematics through an examination of the local lottery. The curriculum is organized around investigations of how local lottery games are won, who plays, how many people play, and where lottery revenues and prizes are distributed. A web-based application is integrated into the curriculum to allow students to explore the lottery in their school neighborhood, examine local lottery data, and assemble and justify their own arguments about the lottery. In this chapter, the authors describe technology's role in shaping a rich curriculum that engages students in investigating a local phenomenon while also addressing the content and practices of the Common Core State Standards of Mathematics. The chapter concludes with an outline of the challenges of integrating custom technologies into mathematics curricula and provides recommendations for future work.

Early Statistical Reasoning

This paper explores the potential of dynamic statistics software for supporting the early teaching and learning of statistical and probabilistic concepts integrated within the mathematics curriculum. It shares the experiences from a case study that implemented a data-driven approach to mathematics instruction using the dynamic data-visualization software InspireData©, an educational package specifically designed to meet the learning needs of students in the middle and high school grades (Grades 4-12). The authors report on how a group of fourteen (n=14) Grade 4 (about 9-year-old) students used the affordances provided by the dynamic learning environment to gather, analyze, and interpret data, and to draw data-based conclusions and inferences. Findings from the study support the view that mathematics instruction can promote the development of learners' statistical reasoning at an early age, through an informal, data-based approach. They also suggest that the use of dynamic statistics software has the potential to enhance statistics instruction by scaffolding and extending young students' stochastical and mathematical reasoning.

Transforming Mathematics Teaching Through Games and Inquiry

This chapter describes the design, development, and testing of a successful mathematics game-based intervention, Math Snacks, for students in grades 3–7. This program shows the impact of an integrative approach of developing Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), where interactive digital media are combined with inquiry-based activities in classrooms facilitated by teacher involvement. Teachers played a key role in development and testing of Math Snacks, both by using them in their classrooms and by teaching core mathematics concepts connected to each module during annual summer camps. Via this multi-faceted participation, teachers experienced a change in their understanding of how digital tools can connect with inquiry-based pedagogy, mathematical content and pedagogical knowledge to facilitate successful learning for students. Teachers began to approach multimedia and games as part of an inquiry-based pedagogical approach for mathematics learning, rather than seeing games as tools for student practice after learning a concept.

Teachers and Mathematical Modeling

Mathematics cannot be reduced to the use of algorithms. The main objective of teaching mathematics in school is their application in real world situations. Mathematical modeling was born as an answer of this concerned and implies the relation between mathematics and applications. Because of that, teachers need to be correctly training in the use of mathematical modeling in their daily lesson plans. The aim of this study is to propose a methodology for help teachers purchase mathematical modeling as a strategy to teach mathematics. Our methodology is based on the analysis of teachers' conceptions about learning and teaching mathematics and after that promote their evolution. The main characteristic is the collaborative work between teachers and the researcher in cycles of discussion and classes' implementation. The evidence showed that teachers can actually change their conceptions about what is needed for teaching mathematics and design lesson plans using mathematical modeling.

Analyzing Prospective Mathematics Teachers' Development of Teaching Practices in Mathematics

This study analyzed the changes in mathematics teacher candidates' teaching processes in terms of content of lesson plan, pedagogy aspects, and classroom management based on the evaluations of the experts, peers, and their own. The results indicated that experts, peer, and self-evaluation of the teaching processes signaled positive changes in teacher candidates' pedagogical content knowledge in mathematics after the lesson study process. Further, the study also demonstrates that teacher candidates acknowledged lesson study as a tool for providing slight improvement in teaching practices while experts and peers provided evidence for impressive improvements in teaching experiences.