Scientific knowledge is dynamic in two senses: it changes and increases extremely rapidly, and it is thrust from the lab into the wider world and public forum almost as rapidly. This implies increasing demands on secondary school science education. Besides knowing key facts, concepts, and procedures, it is important for today’s students to understand the process by which the claims of science are generated, evaluated, and revised – an interplay between theoretical and empirical work (Dunbar & Klahr, 1989). The educational goals behind the work reported in this chapter are to improve students ’ understanding of this process and to facilitate students ’ acquisition of critical inquiry skills, while also meeting conventional subject matter learning objectives. In addition to the need to change what is taught, there are grounds to change how it is taught. Research shows that students learn better when they actively pursue understanding rather than passively

1 Situated Support for Learning: Storm’s Weekend with Rachael While much attention has been paid to the content of support for learning, less attention has been given to its context. This paper introduces the notion of “situated support, ” and argues that the identity of the source of support and the connectedness of that support to other elements of the learning environment are of primary importance. MOOSE Crossing is a text-based virtual reality environment (or “MUD”) designed to be a constructionist learning environment for children eight to thirteen years of age. A microanalysis is presented of the situated nature of support for learning on MOOSE Crossing over the course of one weekend where a twelve-year-old girl learned to write simple computer programs.

The Belvedere software environment was designed to support students engaged in collaborative learning while solving ill-structured problems requiring integration of multiple sources of data to evaluate competing hypotheses or solutions. Students are posed with web-based “science challenge problems,” which present a recent or current debate in science along with on-line articles, data, and suggestions for hands-on data-gathering activities. Students use the Belvedere inquiry-diagramming facility to record hypotheses under consideration, information gathered, and the evidential relations between them. Preliminary studies with Belvedere suggest that the design of representational tools can have a significant effect on the learners’ knowledge-building discourse. However, these effects are insufficiently studied. After several years of laying the groundwork by building and deploying such software, the author and colleagues have begun such an in-depth investigation, examining the effects of textual, diagrammatic and tabular representational tools on the quality of knowledge-building discourse between learners. The paper describes the Belvedere work that led to this position, lays out a research agenda, and describes pilot studies now underway.

There has been much interest in using software tools to scaffold learners in complex tasks, that is, to provide supports that enable students to deal with more complex content and skill demands than they could otherwise handle. Many different approaches to scaffolding techniques have been presented in a broad range of software tools. I discuss two mechanisms to explain how software tools can scaffold learners. Software tools can help structure the learning task, guiding learners through key components and supporting their planning and performance. In addition, tools can shape students ’ performance and understanding of the task in terms of key disciplinary content and strategies, thereby problematizing this important content. While making the task more difficult in the short term, by forcing learners to address these ideas, such scaffolded tools make this work more productive opportunities for learning.

Instructional materials can serve as learning materials for both students and teachers. They can serve a primary source of science content, present specific views about the nature of scientific practices, and how scientific knowledge is developed. Materials can also serve as a primary influence on how teachers

this documentation could be done with a printer, not all classrooms have ready access to printing, nor the resources to allow each student to print out and keep track of multiple pages. The software allows comments to be integrated within the captured screen, and more effective access and organization than is possible with paper copies only

This paper describes design of an interactive learning environment to increase student achievement in middle schools by addressing students ’ preconceptions, and promoting purposeful social collaboration, distributed cognition, and contextual learning. The paper presents a framework that guided our design efforts to immerse all students in a progression of guided-inquiry hands-on activities. Students find compelling reasons to learn by responding to authentic science-based challenges, both in simulations and hands-on activities, based on specific instructional objectives from the national standards.

Promising practices and core learnings in arts education: literature review of

The Arts Education Partnership is a national coalition of arts, education, business, philanthropic and government organizations that demonstrates and promotes the essential role of the arts in the learning and development of every child and in the improvement of America's schools. The Partnership includes over 100 organizations that are national in scope and impact. It also includes state and local partnerships focused on influencing education policies and practices to promote quality arts education. The

As an instructor of introductory statistics, I have developed several computer applications aimed at facilitating students ' development of statistical concepts. The software design has been influenced by my experience in teaching statistics; the knowledge of learning, problem solving, and cognition that I have gathered as a cognitive psychologist; and my experience with computers as both a computer user and a