This study explores the possibility of enhancing music education experiences for creative agency and participatory musicking in the primary classroom by combining Kodály pedagogy, collaborative learning, one-to-one teaching, and digital technology. The research reflects upon the discussion on contemporary musicality and participative aesthetics in the technologically mediated world, and a four-dimensional model for teaching and development based on improved creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical listening is proposed. The mixed-methods design used included classroom intervention, observation, teacher interviews, student reflections, and competency assessment. The study took place for 16 weeks, with 100 fifth-grade students in Shenzhen, China. The teaching model integrated the embodied teaching skills of the Kodály tradition with collaborative music activities and interactive digital tools to allow students to have the experience of music as a creative, cooperative, and multi-modal process. Results showed a significant improvement in overall student music performance, with mean scores increasing from 42.1 (SD = 11.5) in the pre-test to 78.9 (SD = 9.2) in the post-test, representing a gain of 36.8 points (87.4
The purpose of this article is to introduce a new author productivity metric: the ejc-index. Different from more well-established metrics, such as the h-index or the i10-index, the ejc-index is less focused on an author’s impact, which is, essentially, a polite way of saying how many times one’s work has been referenced. Based on some rather sketchy mathematics, an article is worth 1 if it has never been referenced, is worth less the more it gets referenced, and is rendered worth nothing after it has been referenced 10 times. A discussion of this, arguably, new world of academic publishing, where almost everything published is automatically cross-referenced and added to different databases automatically, is presented relative to the ejc-index, which hopefully provides authors, academics, and scholars some solace and a metric for when their work never gets referenced. I see you.
Within the context of pedagogical innovation, using a qualitative research intervention, this study examined the effects of an intervention on the application of scientific inquiry skills. Such skills are essential for the acquisition of scientific literacy, deemed fundamental to the development of a 21st-century skill set. This intervention is necessary because PISA results show that francophone students in New Brunswick have significantly lower scientific literacy scores than other students in Canada. The intervention presented a sequence of activities that inserted students into an active inquiry process involving the application of conceptual, procedural and epistemic knowledge. Results indicate that the intervention created an environment conducive to the application of inquiry skills and demonstrated real potential for change. Our analysis shows that the students were able to recognize a problem, design a test scenario, conduct an experiment and analyze and evaluate a solution. Participant experiences confirm our findings: teachers reflected on their pedagogy and the potential for scientific inquiry to drive learning, while students showed increased engagement, with many discovering a renewed interest in science. These results provide recommendation pathways for teachers and the education system that can enrich science teaching and learning practices in francophone-minority settings.
Despite growing equity initiatives, underrepresentation persists in STEMM fields across Canada limiting cognitive diversity. At Dalhousie University, institutional data revealed steep attrition of underrepresented minority (URM) science students from undergraduate to doctoral levels, most acutely among local African Nova Scotian (ANS) and Mi’kmaq populations, underscoring the urgency of addressing STEMM’s leaky pipeline. This study evaluates a novel set of courses (FIGS0021/0022), developed as a first-year intervention to support URM students through the Dalhousie Science Scholars Leaders Program (DSSLP): Canada’s first community-centred, course-based, longitudinal STEMM equity initiative. The program aims to strengthen students’ academic sense of belonging (ASB), clarify knowledge of the hidden curriculum (KHC), and foster early STEMM career-commitment and professional-identity overlap (STEMM-PIO). Using a mixed-methods design across two cohorts (2023–2025), DSSLP-FIGS students (n = 26) completed validated pre–post surveys incorporating Likert items, demographic questions, and multi-metric instruments to assess eight core competencies. Quantitative inferences (via Welch’s t-tests, Mann–Whitney U-tests, McNemar’s exact test, Chi-square test) assessed changes across four domains. Thematic analysis of student testimonials complemented these findings by capturing perceived competency growth and course impact. Significant improvements (p < 0.001) were observed in students’ ASB, KHC (including intragraduate, graduate, and post-graduate knowledge domains), and STEMM-PIO. Additionally, ANS-identifying students were more likely to report meaningful faculty connections than non-participant peers. The findings affirm the DSSLP-FIGS courses as an effective intervention for improving early STEMM outcomes among URM students. By integrating adaptive pedagogy and leadership development, the program offers a comprehensive model for advancing equity in Canadian STEMM higher-education.
This paper introduces a framework of eight distinct numeracies, each corresponding to a critical domain of social life, to support citizenship education in mathematics. Drawing from the New Literacy Studies and justice-oriented citizenship education, I argue that numeracy is not a generic set of skills, but a collection of situated practices shaped by specific social, cultural, and institutional contexts. The paper critiques approaches that treat “real-life” contexts as superficial and emphasizes the need to select contexts intentionally to foster civic and democratic engagement. Each numeracy, ranging from health and culture to finance and climate change, is conceptualised in relation to the orientations it mobilizes for personal and collective action. By recognizing numeracy as embedded in everyday practices, the framework helps researchers and practitioners align mathematics education with broader goals of equity and social transformation. The paper concludes by outlining implications for teachers, curriculum developers, and researchers, calling for educational practices that acknowledge and support the multiple numeracies individuals already engage with in their lives, in order to promote more responsive and meaningful mathematics education for citizenship.
The integration of ethnoscience into project-based learning (PjBL) has gained increasing attention as a culturally responsive approach to fostering twenty-first century skills in science education. However, limited empirical evidence explains how lecturers’ knowledge and pedagogical competence shape the implementation of Ethno-PjBL and its impact on students’ twenty-first century skills. This study investigates the structural relationships among lecturer knowledge, pedagogical competence, Ethno-PjBL implementation, and students’ twenty-first century skills in higher education science programs in Indonesia. A quantitative survey design was employed involving 38 science lecturers from multiple universities. Data were analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results demonstrate that lecturer knowledge has a strong and significant effect on pedagogical competence (β = 0.986) and directly influences students’ twenty-first century skills (β = 1.396). Pedagogical competence significantly predicts the implementation of Ethno-PjBL (β = 0.885), while the direct effects of pedagogical competence and Ethno-PjBL implementation on twenty-first century skills are not statistically significant. The structural model explains a substantial proportion of variance in twenty-first century skills (R2 = 0.965), indicating strong predictive power. These findings highlight that the effectiveness of Ethno-PjBL is primarily driven by lecturers’ conceptual understanding and pedagogical readiness rather than the mere adoption of instructional models. The study underscores the importance of strengthening lecturers’ professional knowledge and pedagogical capacity to ensure meaningful implementation of culturally integrated project-based learning for developing twenty-first century skills in higher education science classrooms.
Supporting abstract concepts in chemistry instruction through structured instructional models is important; however, the literature indicates that experimental evidence regarding the integrated use of artificial intelligence applications with constructivist models, particularly the 5E instructional model, is limited. This study aims to examine the effect of using an artificial intelligence tool during the exploration and elaboration phases of the 5E instructional model in teaching the periodic table on students’ Attitudes Toward Science and Motivation Toward Science Learning. The study was conducted using a pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design with a control group and included a total of 34 eighth-grade students enrolled in two classes during the 2023–2024 academic year. In both groups, the instructional process was planned based on the 5E model; AI-supported activities were implemented in the relevant phases in the experimental group, whereas the control group used the textbook and printed materials. Data were collected through attitude and motivation scales and analysed using mixed-design analysis of variance. The findings indicated significant increases in attitude and motivation scores over time in both groups. The time × group interaction was not significant, suggesting that AI integration did not produce a significant differentiation compared to the 5E model alone within this sample. The results demonstrate that structured chemistry instruction based on the 5E model in teaching the periodic table improved students’ Attitudes Toward Science and Motivation Toward Science Learning, and that AI-supported applications may be considered as tools that support the pedagogical structure.
Analogies are commonly used in mathematics teaching as a means to promote understanding of new potentially abstract concepts, by linking them to well-understood contexts. Despite strong intuition that analogies are helpful in supporting students’ learning of mathematics, there is a lack of agreement on how to objectively judge the utility or conceptual affordances of these analogies. In this paper, we aim to conceptualise how to assess the effectiveness of an analogy by employing Gentner’s structure-mapping theory to analogies and explore two teacher-made analogies (the ‘child-mother’ and the ‘machine’) for learning the formal definition of a function as illustrative examples. By applying the criteria for effective analogies, we are able to evaluate the effectiveness of the analogies in terms of both their affordances and constraints, thereby providing a structured approach to articulate the source specificity, clarity, scope, and appropriateness of an analogy.
This study was conducted using an adopted design-based research (DBR) approach to investigate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI)-supported object recognition technology on middle school students’ learning of the “Systems in Our Body” unit. A dataset capable of identifying human organs was developed using the YOLOv8 algorithm and the Roboflow platform, and this dataset was integrated into the instructional process. The research consisted of four main stages: initial design, pilot implementation, revision, and main implementation. During the pilot implementation, both technical and pedagogical issues were identified, leading to the redesign of the lesson scenario. The main implementation was carried out with 5th grade students. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest control group design was used to measure the effectiveness of the intervention. In addition, qualitative data were collected through a focus group interview with the experimental group students. Quantitative findings revealed that the AI-supported dataset significantly improved students’ academic achievement. Qualitative findings indicated positive changes in students’ cognitive and affective development. The study suggests that AI-assisted instructional tools can enhance science learning processes and increase classroom engagement. These findings suggest that AI-supported image recognition can foster both conceptual understanding and motivation in science education.
This study explores secondary school students’ perceptions of computer-aided instruction (CAI) in physics education, comparing its effectiveness with traditional teaching methods. Using a descriptive survey research design, data were collected from 200 students across selected senior secondary schools in Ondo West Local Government Area, through a structured questionnaire. The results indicate that students generally perceive CAI as an effective instructional tool, with 90
Integrating technology in learning has been shown to positively influence mathematics outcomes across various educational levels. However, existing literature on the effectiveness of technology integration in mathematics education tends to focus on isolated aspects of technology’s role, lacking a cohesive framework for understanding its underlying mechanisms and applications in learning. This meta-analysis aims to address this gap by examining the multilayered constructs of technology’s impact on secondary students’ mathematics achievements, drawing upon the theoretical foundation of activity theory. Our meta-analysis synthesized findings from 44 selected studies from 37 articles, revealing a large and significant positive influence of technology integration on secondary school students’ mathematics performance (g = 0.51, k = 44, 95
This study presents a new survey designed to measure the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of preschool teachers and their confidence in such knowledge. To measure these elements in depth, the survey focuses on a specific area of mathematics: informal numeracy. We conducted the survey among 344 students registered in the "preschool teacher" program at four teacher training institutes in French-speaking Belgium. This article presents the initial empirical validation phase of the survey followed by descriptive analyses about the cardinal principle. The survey results suggest an incoherence between the logic underlying students' responses and our conceptual and theoretical assumptions, as well as between the correctness of their responses and their levels of confidence. Finally, we discuss the implication of these results on initial teacher training and on methodologies used to measure PCK in the field of mathematics.
Teacher shortage is a global problem. One strategy adopted in several countries to help address the shortfall of teachers is to employ career-change teachers, sometimes through alternative entry pathways, which allow aspiring teachers to teach in a school, while simultaneously working towards their teacher qualification. Teachers of STEM subjects, including mathematics, technology, physics, chemistry, biology, and generalist science, are in short supply in many schools, especially in low SES, disadvantaged, rural, and remote schools. This paper draws upon interview and survey data with Australian teachers at the beginning, middle, and completion of their 2-year employment-based pathway to a teaching qualification and tells the story of three teachers through individual vignettes. This paper takes a phenomenological approach to the data as we sought to understand the meaning and lived experience of each of the participants, all of whom were career-change teachers. This longitudinal research study specifically examines the motivations for career-change teachers who have come from STEM disciplines, as they make the change to teaching, and how they sustain their motivations through their early years of teaching. The study found that, as STEM professionals enter the teaching profession, building an understanding of the issues specific to sustaining their motivation for teaching is important. This will ensure that, as a community, we not only foster individual success but also that STEM teachers are retained in the workforce.
Our research project aims to integrate inferential statistics into the Hungarian secondary school curriculum. Between 2019 and 2023, we developed and tested an experimental curriculum incorporating simulations and Excel-based calculations. This approach addresses broader challenges in understanding statistical inference and presents our strategies for designing an experimental seminar for in-service teachers. The underlying principles of the curriculum are inspired by Complex Mathematics Education, a long-term initiative rooted in the ideas of Tamás Varga. Using a pre-post-test design and semi-structured teacher interviews, we evaluated the curriculum’s feasibility. Feedback indicates that our revised approach and materials align well with the current Hungarian curriculum reform. Findings across the project’s phases suggest that, with adequate technical support and sufficient practice tasks, even complex statistical concepts can be successfully taught to beginners. This approach supports diverse learner profiles and accommodates varying levels of prior knowledge and ability across schools. The article presents key insights from our teacher-training efforts over three phases, involving a total of 32 educators.
Despite global emphasis on STEM education, its meaningful integration into mathematics classrooms remains a significant challenge. The perceptions of mathematics teachers are critical in shaping classroom practice, yet this area remains underexplored. Grounded in the theory of planned behaviour, this study investigates the perceptions and practices of 186 secondary mathematics teachers in Shanghai through questionnaire and interview data. The findings reveal a key discrepancy: while teachers value STEM integration, they predominantly view mathematics as a service tool for science, technology, and engineering, rather than an equal component. While the national curriculum and local teaching research groups act as primary drivers for integration, teachers identified a critical need for more relevant professional development and targeted teaching materials. Consequently, despite a reported willingness to integrate STEM, teachers’ actual implementation was infrequent, occurring only once or twice per year on average. Notably, teachers in designated STEM-advanced schools demonstrated significantly higher willingness and more frequent implementation. This study illuminates the persistent gap between intention and practice, highlighting the urgent need to align policy, teacher training, and institutional support with the realities of the mathematics classroom to foster effective STEM integration.
This viewpoint article analyzes several limitations of current science education practices and proposes a pragmatic avenue for strengthening students’ scientific thinking. It argues that many classroom inquiry activities remain organized around linear and verification-oriented models that leave little room for genuine epistemic engagement. To address this problem, the article advances two complementary proposals: first, to treat scientific thinking as the product of a continuous developmental process by organizing repeated inquiries around the same problem, or around closely related problems; and second, to assign a more central role to the presentation, defense, and collective evaluation of results. Repeated inquiry is argued to help learners build on prior attempts, refine methodological choices, and strengthen the persuasiveness of their conclusions, while peer defense fosters epistemic agency, critical reflection, and a deeper understanding of the social regulation of scientific knowledge. Although such changes entail practical constraints, the article argues that targeted and realistic adjustments to existing classroom practices may support a more meaningful development of scientific thinking.
This study examines secondary school teachers’ perceptions of the integration of STEM projects in educational centres in the province of Barahona (Dominican Republic), aiming to identify the factors that influence their development and impact. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach, data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to 84 teachers and semi-structured interviews with 31 participants. Findings reveal a generally positive attitude towards STEM, linked to its potential to contextualise learning and foster key student competencies. However, several limitations were also identified, including limited interdisciplinary training, a lack of technological resources, and insufficient institutional support. Teachers’ accounts point to a partial and uneven adoption of the STEM approach, shaped by structural and cultural barriers. The study concludes by highlighting the need for sustained professional development, collaborative strategies, and enabling organisational conditions to ensure the effective and context-sensitive integration of STEM in secondary education.
Many of us live in neighbourhoods that are the sites of everyday yet complex socio-ecological interactions between human and non-human elements. Urban green space, which includes urban forests, trees, parks, and gardens, is one such collection of elements and it plays an important role in these interactions. In the present study, we report on how primary students enacted sustainability competences as they created and interpreted maps to identify and address issues related to sustainability and urban green space in their neighbourhood. We found that students incorporated diverse representations of green space and demonstrated nuanced ways of negotiating the balance between the role of urban green space and other aspects of their everyday lives in sustainability-related contexts.
In an era of rapid information exchange and increasingly complex global challenges, scientific reasoning has become a vital skill in both education and research. This study aims to investigate the evolution and global influence of scientific reasoning ability from 2000 to 2024 through a bibliometric analysis. The research examines publication trends, leading authors, and international collaborations, while also exploring the relevance of scientific reasoning to pressing global issues such as climate change, public health, and technological innovation. The findings reveal a significant increase in scholarly output and cross-national partnerships, indicating a growing recognition of scientific reasoning as a core academic and practical competency. Moreover, the integration of scientific reasoning into educational frameworks and research agendas underscores its critical role in cultivating adaptive, critical thinkers. These insights highlight the strategic importance of fostering scientific reasoning skills to prepare future leaders capable of addressing global challenges.
