Along with SLRG co-members, Archie Dobaria recently published an article highlighting results and analyses associated with the MEL Project. The team compared the more autonomy-supportive baMEL to the less autonomy-supportive pcMEL and found that both scaffolds shifted high school student and preservice teacher participants’ plausibility judgments toward a more scientific stance and increased their knowledge about the topics. Additional analyses revealed that the baMEL resulted in deeper evaluations and had stronger relations between levels of evaluation and post-instructional plausibility judgements and knowledge compared to the pcMEL.

There has never been a more pressing need for students to learn how to evaluate scientific information online than during the COVID-19 outbreak. Information, misinformation, and disinformation spread quickly across online news and social media platforms. This misleading or incorrect scientific information about infectious diseases could lead to negative outcomes for those who believe it is true or follow the information. Published in winter 2023 edition of The Science Teacher, Herrick et al. outline six steps to support students in evaluating scientific claims online.

Along with co-authors Gina Childers, David Osmond, and Stacy Britton, SLRG’s own Donna Governor has published a new article in Research in Science Education, a prestigious science education research journal.

Science cafés create open, public forums to promote the exchange of ideas between science experts and the public. This innovative research merged perspectives on informal learning
environments based on self-determination theory and the contextual model of learning. In fact, most science cafés attendees said that knowledge and learning;
fulfilled personal needs, but social interactions, with other attendees and science experts also factored heavily in the decision to attend. Exciting work as we seek to understand how to better engage the public in the scientific enterprise!

SLRG member Janelle Bailey has recently published two new articles. Along with Temple alumna and staff member Jess McLaughlin, a systematic review of spatial thinking research in geoscience education was recently published as an open access article in Studies in Science Education. This paper emerged from Jess’s capstone project for her M.Ed. in Educational Psychology at Temple. The second paper is a practitioner piece on the astronomy MEL activities, co-written by Doug Lombardi and published in The Physics Teacher’s AstroNotes column.

Citations: 

Bailey, J. M., & Lombardi, D. (2022). Astronomy activities for promoting scientific evaluation [AstroNotes column]. The Physics Teacher, 60(3), 87–88. https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0009695

McLaughlin, J. A., & Bailey, J. M. (2022). Students need more practice with spatial thinking in geoscience education: A systematic review of the literature. Studies in Science Education, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2022.2029305 [open access at this link]

SLRG team members Janelle Bailey, Sonia Jamani, Tim Klavon, Josh Jaffe, and Svetha Mohan recently published “Climate Crisis Learning Through Scaffolded Instructional Tools” in Educational and Developmental Psychologist. This is the first article for an upcoming special issue on the Climate Crisis under guest editor Doug Lombardi to be published in early 2022.

Dr. Donna Governor has written a blog post for ARISE on the value of professional organizations, such as National Science Teaching Association (NSTA), in supporting new teachers, especially Noyce Scholars who are beginning their first-full time teaching experiences. Check out the blog post here.

Our own Dr. Doug Lombardi published an article with colleagues about active learning in Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI). Association for Psychological Science reports:

In the latest issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI), teams of researchers across many disciplines synthesized recent findings on STEM learning to provide a focused description of active learning and offer guidance on current practice and future research.

‘Because of the vagaries of the term “active learning,” my colleagues and I wanted to provide a coherent and actionable concept of active learning that incorporates a wide array of research disciplines,’ said Doug Lombardi, a researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park, and first author on the paper. ‘Our goal was to provide a clear picture of active learning and offer guidance on research and practice.’

Check out the article here.

Our very own lab coordinator and graduate research assistant, Svetha Mohan, has received the 2021 Outstanding Master’s Student award from the College of Education at University of Maryland. She also successfully defended her master’s thesis and is set to graduate in May 2021. Congratulations!

Dr. Bailey and four Temple undergraduate students have published an article in The Science Teacher based on their recent work in project-based learning, linking science and science fiction. Check out “The Survival Games: Linking science and science fiction to better understand the realities of biomes, fitness, and climate change” here.

Dr. Donna Governor’s recently published paper on how science cafes, which are open forums promoting the exchange of science ideas between scientists and the public, shows how they can help adults learn science. The study explored Science Café attendees’ interest in science content, and motivational factors in attending events as well as documenting what attendees did with the information presented at an event through the means of a survey and interviews.

Check out the paper here.