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Purpose: We explored the practices and understandings around using disaggregated data to inform instruction of 18 principals from three Midwestern school districts. Research Method: This qualitative study used one-on-one semistructured interviews with the principals focusing on how they disaggregate data in practice. The protocol included general questions about principals’ data practices as well as specific questions around disaggregation. Initial inductive coding began with principals’ direct responses to specific questions around disaggregation, and then emerging themes were used to analyze the entire transcripts. Findings: Participants were more likely to talk about disaggregation in relation to performance (by teacher, by grade level, etc.) than by subgroup (by race/ethnicity, by gender, etc.). Further analysis highlighted principals’ purposes for disaggregating data that focused on identifying low performance on standards-based assessments, as well as the challenges they faced, particularly in terms of technical skills and software. Implications for Research and Practice: We conclude with a discussion of how disaggregation could support or challenge equity-focused leadership, with implications for policy, practice, and preparation. We consider the role of the principal in identifying inequitable patterns versus focusing on individual students, and different ways that equity can become part of regular leadership practice.

In this paper, we present a study of second graders’ learning about the nature of matter in the context of content-rich, model-based inquiry instruction. The goal of instruction was to help students learn to use simple particle models to explain states of matter and phase changes. We examined changes in students’ ideas about matter, the coherence of their emerging particle models, and how classroom science discourse influenced students’ learning. The study was conducted in two second grade classrooms in a rural Midwestern public school. We worked with the two teachers to help them design modeling activities for students to complement lessons from the Full Option Science System (FOSS™) science curriculum the teachers had previously used. Our data sources for student learning included individual interviews with students before and after they completed the set of Modeling in the Primary Grades (MPG) lessons, artifacts created by students during learning such as posters and science notebook entries, and videotapes of MPG lessons. Our findings suggest that second grade students who engaged in MPG model-based inquiry lessons learned to use simple particle models to describe and explain a variety of material phenomena. For example, they could use particle models to account for differences in the appearance and behavior of solids, liquids, and gases and to explain what happens to matter during phase transitions. We also found variations in how MPG teachers structured classroom discourse, and our results suggest that such variations are associated with differences in the coherence of student models. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 9999:XX–XX, 2017

Design-based research (DBR) is a new methodological framework that was developed in the context of the learning sciences; however, it has not been used very often in the field of gifted education. Compared with other methodologies, DBR is more process-oriented and context-sensitive. In this methodological brief, the authors introduce DBR and explain why it can be useful to researchers in the field of gifted education. The authors give an overview of the history and the key features of DBR, then discuss the challenges of using DBR. Based on both the literature and the authors’ experiences using DBR as a framework in their own empirical studies, suggestions are provided to help gifted education researchers who would like to use DBR.

The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure Turkish kindergarten students' understandings of some science concepts and scientific inquiry processes which are grounded in the Turkish Preschool Curriculum. The sample of the study was 371 kindergarten students, 12 Subject Area Experts (SAE), and 7 Turkish Language Experts (TLE). Six stages were followed in the development process of the instrument: (i) item formulation, (ii) content validity, (iii) language validity, (iv) item difficulty and discrimination index, (v) factor analysis, and (vi) reliability. First, an item pool was constituted with 42 items. Second, SAEs and TLEs rated these items in respect to the degree to which they reflected the content and their understandability and grammar accuracy in Turkish. Third, all items were implemented kindergarten students, and 26 items were eliminated according to their item difficulty and discrimination index values. Last, factor analysis and reliability were studied by means of the data belonging to the rest of items. Results revealed that the instrument with 16 items had two factor structure and acceptable reliability.

We examined science learning and motivation outcomes as a function of children's participation in the classroom and classroom-plus-home components of the Scientific Literacy Project (SLP). The sample was comprised of kindergarten children in 4 low income, neighboring schools. Children in Schools 1 and 2 (n = 120) participated in the SLP science activities. Of these children, 79 participated in the classroom component of the SLP whereas 41 participated in both the classroom and home components. A comparison group of children in schools 3 and 4 (n = 74) participated in regular science activities. We identified science learning, achievement, and motivational benefits for the SLP groups. Additional benefits for children who participated in both the classroom and home components of the SLP were greater gains in general science knowledge, higher levels of positive self-competence beliefs for science, perceived family support for learning science, and independence for learning science.

The purpose of this study was to examine how participation in an inquiry-based science program impacts kindergarten students’ science learning and motivation. The study was implemented as part of a larger, federally funded research project, the Scientific Literacy Project or SLP (Mantzicopoulos, Patrick, & Samarapungavan, 2005). The study provides descriptive data on the science learning and motivation of public kindergarten students who participated in a year-long implementation of a series of inquiry-based science units as part of SLP. The students who learned science through guided-inquiry (the INQ group) completed six inquiry-based science units over the course of the school year. Data were also collected from a group of kindergarten students (the COMP group) who received regular science instruction on a similar set of topics to the INQ group but did not use the inquiry-based SLP approach to science. Data from this latter group helped us better understand the extent to which the patterns of conceptual...

Psychological and educational researchers have developed a flourishing research program on epistemological dimensions of cognition (epistemic cognition). Contemporary philosophers investigate many epistemological topics that are highly relevant to this program but that have not featured in research on epistemic cognition. We argue that integrating these topics into psychological models of epistemic cognition is likely to improve the explanatory and predictive power of these models. We thus propose and explicate a philosophically grounded framework for epistemic cognition that includes five components: (a) epistemic aims and epistemic value; (b) the structure of knowledge and other epistemic achievements; (c) the sources and justification of knowledge and other epistemic achievements, and the related epistemic stances; (d) epistemic virtues and vices; and (e) reliable and unreliable processes for achieving epistemic aims. We further argue for a fine-grained, context-specific analysis of cognitions within t...

We examine kindergarten children's emerging social meanings about science as a function of their participation in integrated science inquiry and literacy activities associated with the Scientific Literacy Project (SLP). We describe changes in 123 SLP kindergarten children's narrative accounts of learning science in school during three different time periods: (a) in September, before the onset of SLP activities; (b) in December, after children had participated in 17 lessons associated with 4 SLP units; and (c) in March, after children had participated in an additional 13 lessons associated with the SLP Marine Life unit. At the end of the year, we: (a) compare SLP children's narratives about science to those of a group of children (n = 70) who only experienced the regular kindergarten program; and (b) examine differences between SLP and comparison children's reports on a measure of learning activities in kindergarten that include science as well as privileged content areas such as reading, writing, and lear...

The Science Learning Assessment (SLA) is an individually administered, instructionally sensitive science assessment for kindergarten students. The SLA is a 24-item objective test, broken down into two subtests. The Scientific Inquiry Processes subtest consists of 9 items designed to measure young children's functional understanding of the nature and processes of scientific inquiry. The Life Science Concepts subtest consists of 15 items designed to measure children's understanding of specific science concepts related to living things and the physical world. Our results on SLA items that assess life science concepts indicate that kindergarten children are able to develop a rich knowledge base about living things. The results of the SLA indicate that even young children can begin to develop an understanding of scientific inquiry with appropriate instructional support. Our findings are consistent with recent work by researchers such as Metz (2004), who argue for a richer conception of children's developmental capacities in the context of science instruction. As educators develop new science curricula and programs to address the lack of rich and challenging science instruction in the early grades, there is a need to document what children learn from such efforts. In order to develop research-based and pedagogically effective science curricula, we need assessments with clearly described theoretical and psychometric characteristics. The SLA is one example of such an assessment that can be used to aggregate and compare learning outcomes, as well as to provide empirical information on kindergarten children's capacities for science learning.

We investigated whether kindergarten girls' and boys' (N ¼ 162) motivation for science (perceived competence and liking) differed. Children were ethnically and linguistically diverse, primarily from low-income families, and attended one of three schools. One school offered a typical kindergarten science experience. Kindergarteners in the other two schools participated in the Scientific Literacy Project (SLP)—a program based on a conceptually coherent sequence of integrated science inquiry and literacy activities. SLP lasted either 5 or 10 weeks. Regardless of sex, both groups of SLP children had greater motivation for science than children who had only the regular science experience. Moreover, children receiving 10 weeks of SLP reported greater science competence than those who received 5 weeks. Boys in regular classrooms reported liking science more than did girls, however there was no sex difference for SLP children. These results are supported by interview data accessing children's ideas about science. The findings suggest that early meaningful participation in science is likely to promote girls' and boys' motivation for science. 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 166-191, 2009

This article presents a commentary on Stellan Ohlsson's (2009) theory of conceptual change by resubsumption and competitive evaluation of cognitive utility. We note two features of Ohlsson's theory that we think are particularly strong. We then argue that Ohlsson's theory explains one route to conceptual change but that there are many other routes to conceptual change that require mechanisms other than Ohlsson's. We discuss a number of these multiple routes to conceptual change. Theories of conceptual change should attempt to explain the broad diversity of routes along which conceptual change occurs.

For learning science, motivational beliefs such as confidence in one's science abilities and liking of science are associated with current and future science achievement, as well as continued interest in science classes and careers. However, there are currently no measures to test young children's motivational beliefs related to science learning. To meet this need, we developed the Puppet Interview Scales of Competence in and Enjoyment of Science (PISCES). We piloted PISCES with 113 kindergarten children in public schools participating in the Scientific Literacy Project (SLP). Factor analysis supported the multidimensional structure of young children's self-related beliefs about learning science. PISCES scales measured Science Liking, Science Competence, and Ease of Science Learning. Correlations among PISCES scales and achievement subtests provided evidence of PISCES's validity. Children's motivational beliefs varied as a function of length of time spent learning science, with competence beliefs associated positively with science experience. There were no gender differences.

This research examines the impact of related classroom activities on fourth grade students' science learning from a school field trip. The current study draws upon research in psychology and education to create an intervention that is designed to enhance what students learn from school science field trips. The intervention comprises a set of activities that include 1) orientation to context, 2) discussion, 3) use of field notebooks, and 4) post-visit discussion of what was learned. The effects of the intervention are examined by comparing two groups of students: an intervention group which receives classroom activities related to their field trip and an equivalent control group which visits the same field trip site for the same duration but does not receive researcher- designed activities. Learning of target concepts in both groups is compared using objective pre- and post-tests, with results that indicate intervention group students learn more than comparison group students.

In this article, the authors examined whether there were different motivational profiles within a sample of kindergarteners (N = 110) learning science. The authors identified 3 profiles involving c...

This study investigated the ways in which beliefs about the nature of the science vary as a function of an individual's chemistry expertise and chemistry research ex- perience across the range from high-schools students, whose exposure to chemistry occurs in the classroom, to practicing research chemists. Interviews conducted with a total of 91 participants probed three key research questions: Do the participants' epistemic beliefs vary as a function of chemistry expertise? Are there discipline-specific values and heuristics that guide chemistry research? How does research experience influence participants' epistemic beliefs? We found that participants' epistemic beliefs varied significantly with chemistry expertise and with exposure to authentic research in chemistry. Differences in both the du- ration and the nature of participation in research had a significant effect on how participants conceptualized science and scientific research. We noted that only the practicing scientists saw a productive role for empirical anomalies that arise in the course of doing research. We found that research chemists thought about their scientific work in terms of a building or "engineering" model of science, rather than the classic hypothetico-deductive model of

The objective of this study was to examine middle school students' developing understanding of the nature of matter and to compare middle school students' ideas to those of elementary schools students, as was done by Nakhleh and Samarapungavan [J Res Sci Teach 36(7):777–805, 1999]. Nine middle school students were interviewed using a scripted, semistructured interview. The interview probed students' understanding of the composition and particulate (atomic/molecular) structure of a variety of material substances; the relationship between particulate structure and macroscopic properties such as fluidity and malleability; as well as understanding of processes such as phase transition and dissolving. The results indicate that most of the middle school students interviewed knew that matter was composed of atoms and molecules and some of them were able to use this knowledge to explain some processes such as phase transitions of water. In contrast, almost no elementary students knew that matter was composed of atoms and molecules. However, the middle school students were unable to consistently explain material properties or processes based on their knowledge of material composition. In contrast to elementary school students, who had scientifically inaccurate but relatively consistent (macrocontinuous or macroparticulate) knowledge frameworks, the middle school students could not be classified as having consistent knowledge frameworks because their ideas were very fragmented. The fragmentation of middle school students' ideas about matter probably reflects the difficulty of assimilating the microscopic level scientific knowledge acquired through formal instruction into students' initial macroscopic knowledge frameworks. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this chapter, we present a modeling-based inquiry framework for the teaching and learning of science in early childhood classrooms. The framework that we present is grounded in our beliefs that (1) a fundamental cultural feature of science is the process of constructing, testing/evaluating, and reconstructing models of the world, and (2) PreK-2 science instruction should be designed to facilitate—through discourse-rich interactions—young children’s understanding of the relationships among domain models as well as their ability to use models generatively. Reflecting a modeling-based inquiry orientation to the teaching and learning of science, our framework is an adaptation and extension of seven key features of the National Research Council’s Practices of for K-12 Science Classrooms from the Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Drawing from a research study involving a kindergarten science unit on “What is Science?”, we provide an example of how teacher-scaffolded inquiry discourse helps children learn to articulate physical science models and develop an understanding of models and modeling in the science classroom, illustrating several dimensions of the framework including: articulating a model; identifying evidence with which to make a prediction; communicating models, and collecting and analyzing evidence. Finally, we discuss how the modeling-based inquiry framework has yielded important theoretical information about the nature of young children’s conceptual development in science and provide implications for its use in classrooms and future research.

The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure Turkish kindergarten students understandings of some science concepts and scientific inquiry processes which are grounded in the Turkish Preschool Curriculum. The sample of the study was 371 kindergarten students, 12 Subject Area Experts (SAE), and 7 Turkish Language Experts (TLE). Six stages were followed in the development process of the instrument: (i) item formulation, (ii) content validity, (iii) language validity, (iv) item difficulty and discrimination index, (v) factor analysis, and (vi) reliability. First, an item pool was constituted with 42 items. Second, SAEs and TLEs rated these items in respect to the degree to which they reflected the content and their understandability and grammar accuracy in Turkish. Third, all items were implemented kindergarten students, and 26 items were eliminated according to their item difficulty and discrimination index values. Last, factor analysis and reliability were studied by means of the data belonging to the rest of items. Results revealed that the instrument with 16 items had two factor structure and acceptable reliability.

This article examines some important theoretical issues with regard to how nonlinear text structures of the kind embodied in hypertext might affect learning. Empirical results showing that well-structured nonlinear texts are as effective as conventional linear ones for learning factual information and that they can enhance inferential reasoning are presented and discussed. It is suggested that using a graphic device called a “conceptual map” to represent the relationships between text concepts can help the reader form a coherent view of the textual information and constrain nonlinear reading to useful juxtapositions of text units.

Purpose. A web-based application was developed to remotely view slide specimens and control all functions of a researchlevel light microscopy workstation, called AccessScope. Students and scientists with upper limb mobility and visual impairments are often unable to use a light microscope by themselves and must depend on others in its operation. Method. Users with upper limb mobility impairments and low vision were recruited to assist in the design process of the AccessScope personal computer (PC) user interface. Participants with these disabilities were evaluated in their ability to use AccessScope to perform microscopical tasks. AccessScope usage was compared with inspecting prescanned slide images by grading participants’ identification and understanding of histological features and knowledge of microscope operation. Results. With AccessScope subjects were able to independently perform common light microscopy functions through an Internet browser by employing different PC pointing devices or accessibility software according to individual abilities. Subjects answered more histology and microscope usage questions correctly after first participating in an AccessScope test session. Conclusions. AccessScope allowed users with upper limb or visual impairments to successfully perform light microscopy without assistance. This unprecedented capability is crucial for students and scientists with disabilities to perform laboratory coursework or microscope-based research and pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.

The current research examined whether children could use certain metaconceptual criteria such as the range of explanation, non-ad hocness of explanation, empirical consistency, amd logical consistency to choose between competing accounts of physical phenomena. The tasks were constructed so that the conceptual content of the explanations to be evaluated was either consistent, inconsistent, or neutral with regard to children's prior knowledge. It was found that even 7-year-olds could use metaconceptual criteria such as the range, empirical consistency, and logical consistency theories when the theories did not violate their beliefs. However only older children (11-year-olds) showed a systematic preference for non-ad hoc theories over ad hoc ones. The findings are consistent with recent work in the philosophy of science showing that, in evaluating theoretical alternatives, scientists are influenced by their prior beliefs about the domain being considered. This research demonstrates that even young children share some of the cognitive underpinnings of scientific rationality that scientists do.

(1996). TASC: Thinking Actively in a Social Context. Gifted and Talented International: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 91-92.

The study compared the performance of a group of congenitally blind children and two groups of sighted children, one of which was blindfolded and the other, visually informed. All the three groups were compared on a set of tasks, most of which have been used repeatedly to differentiate between the two developmental levels found to correspond roughly to the period of post-infancy, early childhood and middle childhood, respectively. The purpose was to test whether: (a) There is a developmental difference reflected in the performance of the blind group and the extent to which such a difference, if any, parallels that of the sighted groups. (b) There is any global or task specific cognition deficit in the blind group as compared to the sighted groups. (c) There is any difference in the performance of the sighted groups who undertook the tasks either visually or factually. Results indicate that cognitive development in the blind is not identical to that in sighted groups. Moreover, the differences in performance between groups are content or task specific and do not take the form of a global deficit across all developmental tasks. Furthermore, performance deficits are a function of both long-term absence of experience and absence of direct or immediate visual information about the stimulus at hand.

This study reports data on the acquisition of knowledge about astronomy in children from India. Based on prior research, we hypothesized that the cosmological models that children construct are influenced by both first-order and second-order constraints on knowledge acquisition. First-order constraints are the implicit assumptions that govern the construction of initial cosmological models. Examples of such constraints include the assumptions that the earth is flat and supported. Such first-order constraints are presumed to be universal. Second-order constraints arise from the specific properties ascribed to cosmological objects. For example, representations of the earth's shape and location relative to the sun and moon constrain the kinds of mechanisms that are generated to account for the day-night cycle. We hypothesized that in cultures where both folk cosmologies and the scientific cosmological model are accessible to children, aspects of folk models are likely to be incorporated in children's cosmologies if they provide a psychologically easier way of satisfying first-order constraints. This hypothesis is supported by our findings with regard to universality and culture specificity in children's cosmologies. Indian children's cosmologies honor a variety of universal first-order constraints. These include constraints on the shape of the earth (e.g., support and flatness) and on the relative locations and motions of objects in the cosmology (e.g., continuity). However, many Indian children borrow the idea that the earth is supported by an ocean or a body of water from folk cosmology. This solution to the support constraint on the shape of the earth is not found in American children's initial cosmologies.