Multidisciplinary projects

Project supervisor: Christos Chytas (c.chytas@uu.nl)

Description

Digital fabrication tools like 3D printers and laser cutters are becoming increasingly accessible and offer exciting opportunities to explore STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, Mathematics) subjects. Students can create sophisticated projects that can be personally meaningful and shared with others. The use of such tools is receiving increasing attention from educators and policymakers thanks to their promising potential for learning through experimentation, creative expression, and authentic inquiry.

However, even though such tools are becoming commonplace in Dutch classrooms, it is still unclear how and in which learning activities they are used. For example, some educators fail at using 3D printing technologies as a means of invention/expression and rather use them for fabricating existing 3D models from open hardware repositories like Thingiverse. This raises concerns about promoting surface instead of deep-sustainable learning and promoting a consumer-oriented approach to STEAM education. This research project investigates how Dutch schools use digital fabrication (3D printing, laser cutters, CNC mills, etc.) in STEAM education through teacher surveys and interviews for:

The collection and analysis of existing school projects/lessons of teachers
The collection and analysis of teaching strategies and instruction models used
Identifying the support needs of the teachers and students
...

Key Literature

*Pedagogies and emerging technologies in education

Blikstein, Paulo. "Digital fabrication and ‘making’ in education: The democratization of invention." FabLabs: Of machines, makers and inventors 4.1 (2013): 1-21.

Blikstein, P., & Krannich, D. (2013, June). The makers' movement and FabLabs in education: experiences, technologies, and research. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children (pp. 613-616).

Halverson, E. R., & Sheridan, K. (2014). The maker movement in education. Harvard educational review, 84(4), 495-504.

Thematic content analysis

Mayring, P. 2000. Qualitative Content Analysis. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 1, 2

Pedagogical content knowledge and TPACK

Ball, D. L., Thames, M. H., and Phelps, G. 2008. Content Knowledge for Teaching: What Makes It Special? Journal of Teacher Education 59, 5, 389–407

Niess, M. L. (2011). Investigating TPACK: Knowledge growth in teaching with technology. Journal of educational computing research, 44(3), 299-317.

Project supervisor: Christos Chytas (c.chytas@uu.nl)

Basic coding and mathematical skills should be accessible to every individual for computational problem solving but also as a means for creative and personal expression. Over the last years, there have been global efforts to foster mathematical and computational thinking in K-12. However, many educators often fail at engaging and maintaining individuals' interest in mathematics by focusing exclusively on theoretical aspects of mathematics that are difficult for the students to connect to their lives. On the contrary, mathematical and computational concepts and practices should be introduced in parallel with creative and real-life applications rather than dull exercises.

This study suggests combining computational design and 3D printing as a means of fostering mathematical and computational thinking to students. The study includes the implementation and assessment/evaluation of an existing workshop concept that allows students to use mathematics and geometry knowledge as well as computational concepts (e.g., iterations and conditional statements) to generate 3D models that can be fabricated at our Teaching and Learning Lab and Lili’s Proto Lab of our university. The existing workshop concept needs to be adjusted according to the mathematics curricula standards of the workshop partipants. The analysis focuses on the evaluation of learning outcomes of lower secondary students in terms of mathematics knowledge and computational thinking (e.g., computational concepts, practices and perspectives).

The expected duration of the workshop is around 2-3 hours per day for 2-3 days. The fabrication of the projects will continue after the students leave our lab. The master student undertaking this project will contribute to implementing the workshops and facilitating the learning activity and fabrication phase along their supervisor. The assessment/evaluation of the workshop outcomes will include questionnaires, interviews and 3D artifact qualitative analysis. Master students with no coding experience are welcome to take the project, but they should be willing to invest a couple of days to get familiar with the computational design tools we use (BlocksCAD or BeetleBlocks or similar).

Links: https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/

Key Literature

Computational Thinking Assessment

Brennan, K., & Resnick, M. (2012, April). New frameworks for studying and assessing the development of computational thinking. In Proceedings of the 2012 annual meeting of the American educational research association, Vancouver, Canada (Vol. 1, p. 25).

van Borkulo, S., Chytas, C., Drijvers, P., Barendsen, E., & Tolboom, J. (2021, October). Computational thinking in the mathematics classroom: fostering algorithmic thinking and generalization skills using dynamic mathematics software. In The 16th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education (pp. 1-9).

Pedagogies

Blikstein, P. (2013). Digital fabrication and ‘making’ in education: The democratization of invention. FabLabs: Of machines, makers and inventors, 4(1), 1-21.

Blikstein, P., & Krannich, D. (2013, June). The makers' movement and FabLabs in education: experiences, technologies, and research. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children (pp. 613-616).

Evaluation of computational design learning activities

Jennifer Jacobs and Leah Buechley. 2013. Codeable objects: computational design and digital fabrication for novice programmers. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1589-1598. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466211

Chytas, C., Diethelm, I., & Tsilingiris, A. (2018, April). Learning programming through design: An analysis of parametric design projects in digital fabrication labs and an online makerspace. In 2018 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) (pp. 1978-1987). IEEE.

Chytas, C., Brahms, E., Diethelm, I., Barendsen, E. (2022, May).

Youth’s Perspectives of Computational Design in Making-based Coding Activities. In FabLearn Europe / MakeEd 2022: 6th FabLearn Europe / MakeEd Conference 2022 (pp. 1–9). https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227.3535231

Project supervisor: Christos Chytas (c.chytas@uu.nl)

Bringing design practices to science and mathematics education is gaining interest with recent science curriculum reforms emphasizing design, and calls for integrated STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math) education. Design is a central practice in science and mathematics disciplines, and could potentially engage students in designing projects in digital formats or fabricating them into the physical realm. Fabrication tools commonly used in education (e.g., with 3D printing/laser cutting) allow students to create artifacts that have quality comparable to that of industrial products. Including such tools in project-based learning activities seems to be an effective strategy to empower and motivate students in using science and mathematics to create sophisticated projects and take a more active role with technology. Digital fabrication itself (e.g., with 3D printing/laser cutting) is also still viewed by many students as an innovative and exciting process.

Science and mathematics teachers are key in bringing design to STEAM classrooms, but little is known about their views on teaching and learning regarding design. This research project aims to better understand how design-based learning activities focusing on aspects like 3D design/printing can complement existing teaching/learning practices in science and mathematics from the perspective of both the teachers and students.

Developed learning activities will be empirically evaluated in the classroom to investigate how design-based learning activities can be appropriate choices for equipping students with scientific literacies and practices like understanding scientific concepts, phenomena and processes, and applying new technical skills and knowledge to address scientific issues. Below you can find an example of a design-based learning activity:

Design of an instrument
Lower secondary school students get to use 3D technology and their understanding of sound waves, frequency, and amplitude. After an introduction on the topic and working with existing material, the students are expected to develop a basic understanding of waves, frequency, and amplitude and generate ideas/testing theories to solve authentic problems (how to make efficient design choices for their artifact to be functional). The students are called to interact with the artifacts we provide them with, as well as the ones they designed and fabricated in a lab/workshop (For example, the Teaching and Learning Lab at our university). The students are called to record and analyze their data and communicate their findings with their peers and tutor(s), discuss about testing strategies for their design considerations, and communicate their findings. The learning activity could end with a reflection on their learning experience.

Key literature:

Pedagogies, design, and technology in education:

Blikstein, P. (2013). Digital fabrication and ‘making’ in education: The democratization of invention. FabLabs: Of machines, makers and inventors, 4(1), 1-21.

Blikstein, P., & Krannich, D. (2013, June). The makers' movement and FabLabs in education: experiences, technologies, and research. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children (pp. 613-616).

Design practices and engineering in mathematics and science:

Vossen, T. E., Henze, I., De Vries, M. J., & Van Driel, J. H. (2019). Finding the connection between research and design: The knowledge development of STEM teachers in a professional learning community. International Journal of Technology and Design Education.

Roehrig, G. H., Moore, T. J., Wang, H. H., & Park, M. S. (2012). Is adding the E enough? Investigating the impact of K-12 engineering standards on the implementation of STEM integration. School Science and Mathematics, 112(1), 31–44.

Methods

Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

Pedagogical content knowledge

Rahimi, E., Barendsen, E., & Henze, I. (2016). Typifying informatics teachers’ PCK of designing digital artefacts in Dutch upper secondary education. In A. Brodnik & F. Tort (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th international conference on informatics in schools: Situation, evolution, and perspectives (pp. 65–77). Cham: Springer.

Project supervisor: Christos Chytas (c.chytas@uu.nl)

Simulation and modeling tools are promising technologies for engaging students in inquiry-based learning activities to investigate and understand the world around them. In fact, in virtual spaces students can even conduct ‘dangerous’ experiments that they could not try in their class (e.g., learning about salmonella bacteria, which is an important topic that schools cannot teach in the lab for safety reasons).

There are several studies investigating the advantages of virtual experiments over physical experimentation as well as combining both. For example, students can explore scientific phenomena such as heat diffusion and wave propagation by conducting physical experiments and in parallel designing virtual models, and connecting the experiments with the models in real-time through iterative comparisons with empirical data. During the physical phase of the process, students design and develop their physical experiment, and they run the experiment while collecting data with embedded sensors or a time-lapse camera and try to model the phenomenon under investigation.

This study will examine how primary/secondary school students design and compare their own experiments in both the digital and physical realms and how to leverage this combination to promote authentic scientific inquiry. The suggested study could examine the applicability and challenges of this combination in formal, non-formal, or informal learning environments from the perspective of multiple stakeholders (teachers, educators, and students). The master students participating in the project can conduct observations of the students and teachers and their interactions in the Teaching and Learning Lab or Lili’s Proto Lab of our university.

Key literature

Bifocal Modeling Framework

Blikstein, P. (2010, June). Connecting the science classroom and tangible interfaces: the bifocal modeling framework. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-Volume 2 (pp. 128-130).

Blikstein, Paulo. "Bifocal modeling: a study on the learning outcomes of comparing physical and computational models linked in real time." Proceedings of the 14th ACM international conference on Multimodal interaction. 2012.

Key studies:

Fuhrmann, T., Schneider, B., & Blikstein, P. (2018). Should students design or interact with models? Using the Bifocal Modelling Framework to investigate model construction in high school science. International Journal of Science Education, 40(8), 867-893.

Fuhrmann, T., Bar, C., & Blikstein, P. (2020). Identifying Discrepant Events as a Strategy to Improve Critical Thinking About Scientific Models in a Heat Transfer Unit in Middle School.

Fuhrmann, T., Fernandez, C., Blikstein, P., & de Deus Lopes, R. (2021). Making Students' Ideas Visible through Coding a Scientific Computational Model. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2021. International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Contact: Liesbeth de Bakker (e.p.h.m.debakker@uu.nl)

A research project focusing on higher education in the field of science communication around the issue of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion with audiences

In recent years ‘Equity’, which is closely related to social inclusion and an openness towards true engagement with diverse and new publics, has become a very important issue in society. Inclusion and diversity have become words of importance, not only at Utrecht University, but also in science centres / museums and other informal science education settings worldwide, and on the work floor. One of the relatively new and very active working groups in the field of informal science education is Equity@Ecsite (Ecsite being the network of European Science Centres and Science Museums).

The problem of exclusion / social inequality has been around for a long time. It has always been part and parcel of our current day society. Over the past decade more and more people came to realise that it is mainly the ‘haves’ that participate and make use of the facilities offered, rather than the ‘have-nots’ who would arguably be those who stand most to benefit from such experiences, in the field of science communication for instance from a museum visit.

Inequality is present in society in many different forms and ways. For instance, it’s attached to gender, socio-economic status, ethnicity, physical ability, religion, and there are more aspects to name. Science and science communication are certainly also affected by it. In recent years equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) have received increasing attention in both science communication practice and research (Judd & McKinnon). In a similar vein EDI has become the Trend to focus on in the UU MSEC course Trends in Science Communication.

This course was set up in 2019 and consists of two main assignments: a ‘reducing gender bias in popular science texts’ assignment and a ‘more equity in everyday science learning’ assignment. The overall goals of the course are to make students more aware of the issue of EDI in science (communication), to motivate them to do something about it and to provide them with tools and skills to become more inclusive science communication practitioners (in the future).

In this research project I want to study how best to achieve those aims through science communication EDI education with my students. To make it a manageable research project (EDI is such a broad issue) I will focus on the ‘reducing gender bias in popular science writing assignment’.

The EDI related issue of gender bias has its base in the fact that men and women are regularly treated as unequal in society. In the natural sciences is it perhaps even more clear than elsewhere, in that it comprises quite a few disciplines that are regarded as masculine (Ikkatai et al., 2020; Kalender et al., 2019). Stereotypes – a scientist is a white man in a lab coat – play an important role in how people perceive their own lives and environment. And while stereotypes can be very helpful in quickly making sense of the world around you or of a particular situation, stereotypes can also severely hamper people in becoming the person they want to be. Just think of the little girl who wants to become a rocket scientist, but who grows up in an environment where her family and friends think that she’d much better become a nurse, a teacher or a house wife.

So in the course and in the gender bias assignment, students have to go through a complex learning process involving several phases: an awareness phase, a motivation phase, an application phase, and an evaluation / reflection phase. Each of those steps can be studied in detail, as well as a further deepening of understanding what gender bias in popular science texts actually means and involves (a deepening of the MSc literature thesis of Maartje Staal), and how best to deal with it or reduce it. In addition the Equity and Access framework for everyday science learning developed by Emily Dawson (2019) can be used as a relevant framework for analysis.

So, depending on interest in either the education aspects, the gender bias aspects, or the inclusive writing aspects of this research project, students can set up their own research question(s). An approach suitable for the issue under investigation will be selected, as well as relevant research methods.

Interested? Please contact Liesbeth de Bakker (e.p.h.m.debakker@uu.nl) for more information.

Core literature

Dawson, E. (2019). Equity, exclusion and everyday science learning. The experiences of minoritized groups. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY – Routledge.

Ikkatai et al. (2020). Masculine public image of six scientific fields in Japan: physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, information science, mathematics and biology. Journal of Science Communication, https://doi.org/10.22323/2.19060202

Judd K and McKinnon M (2021) A Systematic Map of Inclusion, Equity and Diversity in Science Communication Research: Do We Practice what We Preach? Front. Commun. 6:744365 doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.744365

Kalender, Z. Y., Marshman, E., Schunn, C. D., Nokes-Malach, T. J., & Singh, C. (2019). Why female science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors do not identify with physics: They do not think others see them that way. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15(2), 020148. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.15.020148

Staal, M. (2019) Reducing Gender Bias in Popular Science Writing, master thesis UU.

Contact: Anna Shvarts (a.y.shvarts@uu.nl)

Imagine a traditional classroom: a teacher is giving a lecture and the students are trying hard to follow the explanations. For some students, the material is boring, as they know everything ahead, and the others are barely able to follow as new terms are popping up all the time in the teacher’s speech without any obvious connection with drawings on the blackboard. New interactive technology promises to provide adaptive education by paving individual learning trajectory for any student. The problem is that technological tools are still much slower than the dynamics of individual tutors’ scaffolding of the students (Belland, 2017). This project aims to understand the complexity of effective student-tutor interaction in one-to-one settings with a distant aim of contributing to the technologically supported adaptive learning.

Joint visual attention between a student and a tutor means focusing on the same objects and similar understanding of their meanings. How do students come to see and name mathematical objects in a way that is similar to the teachers? Investigation of infants shows that naming the objects, which are in the focus of infants' attention is more effective for vocabulary learning than redirecting their attention to new objects (Tomasello & Farah, 1986). Theoretically, this project relies on an embodied approach to teaching and learning that stresses the complexity of student-teacher interaction. A student does not just follow the teacher, but actively participates in multimodal flow of teaching-learning interaction, where speech is combined with gestures to the visual display. It is crucial for the student to connect different modalities into one meaningful node (Radford, 2009). To understand the key aspect on this interaction, we introduce a notion of micro-zone of proximal development, which is a moment when a student and a tutor are coordinated in one modality (e.g., attending to the same visual display), but are discoordinated in other modality (e.g., they do not have a shared language to refer to it) (Shvarts & Abrahamson, 2019). In this project, we will investigate if micro-zone of proximal development is a moment when a teacher's intervention is particularly effective and lead to joint attention to the same mathematically meaningful object.

The methodology of the project lies on the crossroads of two technological innovations: touchscreens’ advantages for mathematical learning and dual eye-tracking’ advantages for investigation of the interaction between students and teachers. The tutors will support students’ problem-solving in technological activities for trigonometry (Shvarts, Alberto, Bakker, Doorman, Drijvers), that are designed in the Digital Mathematics Environment (DME) of the Freudenthal Institute. Dual eye-tracking, namely a synchronous tracking of two people's overt attention, will provide information about the visual perception of a student and a tutor's (see a video with a sample of data). At the same time, video and audio records will provide information about the participant's verbal and gestural utterances. Analysis of coordination and discoordination between modalities will shed light on the teaching-learning progress.

The study is a part of a broader experimental investigation of embodied processes in the introduction of mathematical tools. We invite the mastery students, who are interested in technology in mathematics education, in embodied processes and/or in acquiring skills of conducting research with innovative equipment such as dual eye-tracking.

Belland, B. R. (2017). Instructional scaffolding in STEM education. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02565-0

Radford, L. (2009). Why do gestures matter? Sensuous cognition and the palpability of mathematical meanings. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 70(2), 111–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-008-9127-3

Shvarts, A., & Abrahamson, D. (2019). Dual-eye-tracking Vygotsky: A microgenetic account of a teaching/learning collaboration in an embodied-interaction technological tutorial for mathematics. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 22, 100316. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.LCSI.2019.05.003

Shvarts, A., Alberto, R., Bakker, A., Doorman M., Drijvers P., (in press) Embodied instrumentation: Reification of sensorimotor activity into a mathematical artifact. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching

Tomasello, M., & Farrar, M. J. (1986). Joint attention and early language. Child Development, 57(6), 1454. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130423

Contact: Veerle Ottenheim (v.l.ottenheim@uu.nl), Ralph Meulenbroeks (r.f.g.meulenbroeks@uu.nl), Rogier Bos (r.d.bos@uu.nl)

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, all universities have used online and or hybrid education. However, not all teaching translates well from face-to-face to online and or hybrid education. There is limited research on the influence that the move from face-to-face to online or hybrid education has on scientific discourse as part of the teaching and learning process. A key role of scientific discourse in the classroom is to allow students to be persuaded or convinced that ideas are true or valuable. We are interested in how such a role takes shape in online and hybrid education.

In a study on the experiences of teachers and students with hybrid education I am currently conducting, teachers mentioned that the use of argumentation is hard to implement when part of the class is online, as the interaction between the students and teachers is vastly different from a face-to-face classroom setting. We take up the challenge of designing a hybrid or online education setup that does allow and promotes argumentation in scientific discourse.

In this research project, you can contribute to investigating how we can implement scientific discourse in a hybrid education setting. The project is a design study, meaning that you will first dive into the literature on scientific discourse in the classroom and the affordances and limitations of hybrid education; then, based on this literature, you design a lesson (series) on a suitable science or mathematics topic. Finally, this design should be experimentally tested as part of a bachelor course at the science faculty. This project contributes to my PhD project on scientific discourse in hybrid education, and as such, we would collaborate closely. If you are interested please send an email to Veerle Ottenheim (v.l.ottenheim@uu.nl), Ralph Meulenbroeks (r.f.g.meulenbroeks@uu.nl) or Rogier Bos (r.d.bos@uu.nl) and we will have a chat about this!

Literature

Lakhal, S., Mukamurera, J., Bédard, M. E., Heilporn, G., & Chauret, M. (2021). Students and instructors perspective on blended synchronous learning in a Canadian graduate program. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 37(5), 1383–1396. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12578
Berland, L. K., & Reiser, B. J. (2009). Making sense of argumentation and explanation. Science Education, 93(1), 26–55. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20286
Erduran, S., Simon, S., & Osborne, J. (2004). TAPping into argumentation: Developments in the application of Toulmin’s Argument Pattern for studying science discourse. Science Education, 88(6), 915–933. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20012

(Room for multiple students)

Contact: Jelle Boeve- de Pauw (j.n.a.boeve-depauw@uu.nl)

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is considered to be one of the key pathways to achieving a sustainable future (Hopkins, 2012). It is a dynamic concept that incorporates a novel vision of education that seeks to empower people, to make it possible for every human being to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to shape a sustainable future (Agbedahin 2019). In formal education, ESD has been described as having the potential to serve as a breeding ground for promoting innovations which meet and cope with the salient social challenges we face in an active and constructive manner (Rauch 2002). However, it presents diverse challenges for teachers.

When we look at definitions of ESD, its complexity is a characteristic that stands out both in the research literature and at policy level. According to UNESCO (2018), ESD aims to provide knowledge about ever‐changing planetary conditions and environmental issues, and their risks and causes. It empowers learners to make informed decisions and take responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society for present and future generations, while ensuring respect for cultural diversity. It prepares people to cope with and find solutions to problems that threaten the sustainability of the planet and social systems (UNESCO, 2018). Consequently, ESD is suggested to promote competences such as critical thinking, imagining better futures and participatory decision-making. It also requires far-reaching changes in the way education is organized and delivered (UNESCO, 2014). Within ESD, educational efforts are described that aim to empower students with the necessary competences to deal with and act upon the complexity of sustainability issues (Sass et al. 2020), requiring a complex educational approach. For teachers, ESD presents a major professional challenge, connected to (among others) the complex educational principles that have emerged in recent ESD-related literature (Sinakou, Boeve-de Pauw, and Van Petegem 2019a).

Recently, Malandrakis et al. (2019) developed a framework and measurement instrument that can be used to assess the current abilities of pre-service and in-service teachers to teach ESD: the Teachers’ Self-Efficacy on Education for Sustainable Development (TSESESD). The validation process of the scale reports its strong psychometric properties, appropriateness for both pre-service and in-service primary school teachers and comprehensive nature, encompassing the current trends of ESD competences. This instrument has great potential to study the self-efficacy of teachers and as such to highlight key features of and focus for their professional development, either at the pre-service or in service stage. Several question are still open before this can be done within the Netherlands:

Is the TSESESD a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the self-efficacy for ESD of (pre- and or in-service) teachers in the Netherlands?
What are the key domains and topics that (pr-e and or in-service) teacher highlight as difficult?
Which differences can be observed within and between pre- and in-service teachers in terms of their self-efficacy for ESD?
How can (pre- and/or in-service) teachers in the Netherlands best be supported to developed their ESD competences?
…

Hopkins, C. (2012). Twenty years of Education for Sustainable Development. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 6, 1–4.

Agbedahin, A. (2019). Sustainable development, Education for Sustainable Development, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Emergence, efficacy, eminence, and future. Sustainable Development, 27, 669–680.

Rauch, F. (2002). The potential of education for sustainable development for reform in schools. Environmental Education Research, 8(1), 43-51.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2018). Issues and trends in Education for Sustainable Development. Paris: UNESCO..

Sass, W., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Olsson, D., Gericke, N., De Maeyer, S., & Van Petegem, P. (2020). Redifining action competence: The case of sustainable development. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(4), 292-305.

Malandrakis, G., Papadopoulou, P., Gavrilakis, C. & Mogias, A. (2019). An education for sustainable development self-efficacy scale for primary pre-service teachers: construction and validation. The Journal of Environmental Education, 50(1), 23-36.

(Room for multiple students)

Contact: Jelle Boeve- de Pauw j.n.a.boeve-depauw@uu.nl

Two hundred years ago there was no concept of a professional scientist. Science was practiced by amateurs driven by their fascination for understanding the natural world. Benjamin Franklin was a printer and a politician, Charles Darwin was an unpaid companion on the Beagle. Science as a profession exists only since the second half of the 19th century (Silvertown, 2009); before, it was a citizens’ affair. The situation is very different nowadays, with science being in the hands of researchers associated to scientific institutions worldwide. Ever increasing competition for funding, and growing awareness that citizens present an opportunity to generate large (and cheap) amounts of data, lead to an increase in the amount of citizen science projects (Conrad & Hilchey, 2011). Bonney et al (2014) define such initiatives as “projects in which volunteers partner with scientists to answer real-world questions”. Recent technological developments facilitate such collaborations: the number of citizen science projects is growing exponentially and policy attention to the matter is increasing rapidly. All over the world citizens are making inventories of migrating birds, monitoring climate change, studying pollutant distributions…

Increasingly, also schools see participation in such citizen science projects as an opportunity to work with their students’ scientific literacy and research competences. These are an essential part of the science curriculum in secondary education, but pose a challenge for teacher as they are best acquired with an authentic research context. Paige, Hattam & Daniels (2015) point out that school science is heavily skewed towards the abstract canon of science rather than towards its nature and relevance for everyday life. Furthermore, standardized tests (e.g. PISA) show decreasing student performance and interest in science, the numbers of students enrolling into science tracks in higher education is decreasing worldwide, and we face a crisis of public confidence in science.

These observations underscore the importance of addressing scientific literacy during the formative years in school. A collaboration between scientists and schools could, (e.g. in the form of students participating in citizen science projects), present unique opportunities for both parties. However, a tension may arise here between the goals scientists and schools wish to achieve. Scientists benefit from the regular and well-defined participation of schools, with a view to guaranteeing data quality. The schools, on the other hand, benefit from connecting citizen science to the interests, authentic questions and local reality of the pupils. They also have to take into account the performance and time pressure that the curriculum entails. Both stakeholders (scientists and schools) can benefit from cooperation within citizen science projects, but the conditions for a fruitful collaboration and the needs of those involved remain unclear. This presents several avenues for relevant research question, in which a focus can be put on …

… the scientists: what are the conceptions scientist have of the pedagogical-didactical approach to teaching and learning science in school? which goals do they have in mind when conducting citizen science projects in collaboration with schools? what kinds of educational material are being developed by scientist who want to involve schools in their citizen science projects? Etc.
… the teachers: what are the motivations of teachers to participate with their students in citizen science projects? How do they choose which citizen science project to participate in, and why? What are the needs of these teachers? Etc.
… the students: what do they learn by participating in citizen science projects, in terms of knowledge, attitudes and skills? How much room is there is (selected) citizen science projects for students’ autonomy is e.g. the selection of research questions.

Bonney, R., et al. (2014). Next steps for citizen science. Science, 343, 1436-1437.

Conrad, C.C., & Hilchey, K.G. (2011). A review of citizen science and community-based environmental monitoring: Issues and opportunities. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 176, 273-291.

Paige, K., Hattam, R., & Daniels, C. (2015). Two models of implementing citizen science projects in middle school. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 14(2), 4-17.

Silvertown, J. (2009). A new dawn for citizen science. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 24(9), 467-471.

Supervisors: Wouter van Joolingen (FI, W.R.vanJoolingen@uu.nl), Roland Geraerts (CS)

This project is a collaboration between Department of Computer science, University Museum and Freudenthal Institute.

At big events, such as pop concerts, sports events and demonstrations, large numbers of people get together in a relatively small space. This can cause problems: due to congestions, people may not be able to reach their goals in time, emergency services (ambulances, fire fighters) may not be able to get through the crowds and even accidents due to suffocation may occur. For this reason it is important to study how such crowds can be managed.

In order to understand how such large numbers of people can be controlled to ensure fluid passage and avoid dangerous situations, the department of computer science develops a crowd simulation that allows for specifying the characteristics of a situation (roads, obstacles, sources and targets of people (e.g. entrances and exits, toilets, viewing positions for a sports event, …). The simulation then computes and visualizes the flows of people in the environment, indicating people flow and problematic points. By adjusting the environment, users can see how the environment influences the flow of the crowd.

The crowd simulations can also have an educational function. By interacting with the simulation, students (the target group is 8-14 year old children) can study the effects of the environment on the people flows and, moreover, study the properties of the model behind the crowd simulation. In such a way, students engage in inquiry-based learning and learn to assess the role of models and modeling in scientific understanding.

The University Museum plans to include a large scale model of the crowd simulator in its new exhibition. This model will allow for physical interaction with the simulation, by moving blocks that represent buildings and other obstacles. Scenarios of use of such a setup are (1) free interaction and exploration by museum visitors in the target age and (2) guided interaction under supervision of a museum guide.

The goal of this master student project will be to investigate the constraints and possibilities for these two scenarios and develop and evaluate test scenarios. For instance, a question is what good starting questions are for students, or how a guide can engage children in active exploration. The scenarios developed will be tested in practice in the Teaching and Learning Lab.

Models play a paramount role in all natural sciences. Whether we are modelling the processes in a cell (biology), the structure of complex molecules (chemistry) or the movement of planets in the solar system (physics/astronomy), the basic idea is the same. Models are created to express our knowledge, our assumptions and hypotheses that can then lead to predictions of how systems will behave, or insights in how to act within a system. The importance of models became very clear recently when specialists had to model the outbreak of the Covid-19 in order to determine the measures to take in order to prevent the uncontrolled spreading of the virus.

For these reasons, modelling is an important topic in the science curriculum. Recent research has focused on the concept of “modelling competency” (Jansen, Knippels, & van Joolingen, 2019; Stiller et al., 2016). This concept has been elaborated quite well in a test for modeling competency, based on the work by Grünkorn and colleagues (Grünkorn, Upmeier zu Belzen, & Kruger, 2014). The goal of the current project is to extend the measurement to chemistry and physics, with as a goal to generate a complete set of test items and examples that can be used for assessing students modeling competency and as a means to evaluate education directed at modelling.

Grünkorn, J., Upmeier zu Belzen, A., & Kruger, D. (2014). Assessing Students’ Understandings of Biological Models and their Use in Science to Evaluate a Theoretical Framework. International Journal of Science Education, 36(10), 1651–1684. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09500693.2013.873155

Jansen, S., Knippels, M.-C. P. J., & van Joolingen, W. R. (2019). Assessing students’ understanding of models of biological processes: a revised framework. International Journal of Science Education, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2019.1582821

Stiller, J., Hartmann, S., Mathesius, S., Straube, P., Tiemann, R., Nordmeier, V., … Belzen, A. U. zu. (2016). Assessing scientific reasoning: a comprehensive evaluation of item features that affect item difficulty. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(5), 721–732. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2016.1164830

Contact: Rogier Bos (r.d.bos@uu.nl)

Instruction and knowledge videos based on dynamical animations have gained enormous popularity with the rise off YouTube. Channels like MinutePhysics and 3Blue1Brown attract millions of views and followers.

Clearly, animated instruction is attractive and manages to popularize science and mathematics. However, research on whether animated video instruction is more effective than static instruction has given mixed results (Berney & Bétrancourt, 2016).

Based on cognitive theory (cognitive load theory, dual channel theory) general design principle for educational videos have been formulated and tested, but domain specific principles are still to be explored. There are many research questions of interest that you could work on in your research project:

Are the video’s from the previously mentioned channels effective? If so, why? What (domain specific) principles do they adhere to?
Can animating formulas and equation in mathematics or science animated videos reduce cognitive load? Does it lead to better reproductive and conceptual understanding?
There is some evidence that instructional videos visualizing human movement are more effective than those visualizing non-human movement (de Koning & Tabbers, 2011; Pouw, van Gog, Zwaan, & Paas, 2016). How can we visualize human movement to support learning mathematics or science (Bos, submitted)? Under what condition are such visualizations effective?

Your research project could be based on existing animation (as in option 1 above), but could also include a design of an animation for which I could provide support.

For more information, email Rogier Bos (r.d.bos@uu.nl).

Berney, S., & Bétrancourt, M. (2016). Does animation enhance learning? A meta-analysis. Computers and Education, 101, 150–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.06.005

de Koning, B. B., & Tabbers, H. K. (2011). Facilitating Understanding of Movements in Dynamic Visualizations: An Embodied Perspective. Educational Psychology Review, 23(4), 501–521. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-011-9173-8

Pouw, W. T. J. L., van Gog, T., Zwaan, R. A., & Paas, F. (2016). Augmenting instructional animations with a body analogy to help children learn about physical systems. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(JUN), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00860

Bos, R., & Renkema, W. (submitted). Animating algebra using embodied metaphors.

Contact: Christine Knippels (M.C.P.J.Knippels@uu.nl)

Development in science and technology such as, artificial intelligence and renewable energy impact society and our personal lives. They often improve our wellbeing but also carry with them scientific uncertainties and social risks. This asks for scientifically literate citizens who are able to make informed decisions about these emerging socio-scientific issues (SSIs); an important aim of our current science curricula.

Education through an inquiry approach in science and technology prepares young citizens to participate in socio-scientific debate. For this purpose, students need to have an understanding of the process and products of science and technology and to appreciate them as human endeavour. In addition, students need to exercise informed decision-making, i.e. considering and balancing relevant facts, interests, values, costs and benefits.

The PARRISE project, aimed to introduce the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation in science and mathematics education to contribute to a scientifically literate society (21st century skills). It does so by combining socio-scientific issues (SSI) and inquiry-based learning (IBL) to foster citizenship (CE) in science education; The SSIBL-approach.

Implementing the SSIBL-approach in science classrooms and teacher training programs is challenging. Many aspects still have to be investigated .We are in need of evidence-based teaching and learning activities to foster informed opinion forming and decision-making in the classroom. Focus of your study can be on aspects such as:

Fostering democratic dialogue in the classroom
Dealing with uncertainty
Reliability of sources/ fake news
Dealing with the complexity of SSIs / multiple stakeholders
Introducing students to authentic (local) SSIs
Involving local stakeholders in students inquiry
Scaffolding inquiry-based learning
Dealing with personal values and beliefs, and societal and ethical aspects of science

Bronnen:

Levinson, R. (2018) Introducing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL). School Science Review, 100(371), 31-35.
Ariza, M.R.; Christodoulou, A.; van Harskamp, M.; Knippels,M.-C.P.J.; Kyza, E.A.; Levinson, R.;Agesilaou, A. (2021)Socio-Scientific Inquiry-Based Learning as a Means toward Environmental Citizenship. Sustainability, 13, 11509. https://doi.org/10.3390/
Knippels, M.C.P.J. & van Harskamp, M. (2018). An educational sequence for implementing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL). School Science Review, 100 (371), 46-52.

Contact: Michiel Doorman (M.Doorman@uu.nl)

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) has been advocated by science and mathematics educators as a means to make students be actively engaged in content-related problem solving processes and in reflecting on the nature of science. Several reasons created the need for IBL varying from improving content-learning, fostering motivation, creating opportunities for learning 21st century skills like creativity, critical thinking and working collaboratively. However, a discrepancy can be found between the need to make IBL accessible to students and teachers’ current classroom practices. Three research projects are proposed in close cooperation with these running projects on this issue.

The first research project accompanies the implementation process of IBL by selected teachers within a case study design. The teachers will be guided in this process and data is retrieved on their beliefs and implementation strategies (e.g., necessary aids and evaluation tools), classroom implementation is observed and students’ responses during and after the implemented unit are considered (e.g., creativity and levels of inquiry). A sample collection of students’ responses is available for an initial explorative study.

In the second project, the central focus is on the redesign of traditional tasks within teacher professional development units. Teachers will be supported and observed during the process of redesigning a closed textbook task into an IBL-oriented task and interviewed afterwards. The aim is to extract the determinants for successful redesigning processes to be able to enhance a research-based tool kit containing redesigning aids to guarantee successful implementation of tasks. The tasks can be selected from subjects within the science or mathematics domain.

The third project concerns a textbook analysis in one or more science domains. You will analyze to what extent textbooks provide opportunities for inquiry-based learning and opportunities for experiencing how scientists think and work. This textbook analysis can be performed in close collaboration with a PhD student who investigates similarities and differences between China and the Netherlands on this issue in lower secondary mathematics education.

References:

Capps, D. K., & Crawford, B. A. (2013). Inquiry-based instruction and teaching about nature of science: Are they happening?. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 24(3), 497-526.

Minner, D. D., Levy, A. J., & Century, J. (2010). Inquiry‐based science instruction—what is it and does it matter? Results from a research synthesis years 1984 to 2002. Journal of research in science teaching, 47(4), 474-496.

Swan, M., Pead, D., Doorman, L.M. & Mooldijk, A.H. (2013). Designing and using professional development resources for inquiry based learning. ZDM - International Journal on Mathematics Education, 45 (7), (pp. 945-957) (13 p.).

Master Theses from previous students in the project:

Nur Rahmah Sangkala (2018). The influence of inquiry based learning on Indonesian students’ attitude towards science.

Lysanne Smit (2016). A better understanding of 21st century skills in mathematics education and a view on these skills in current practice.

Contact: Gerard Dummer (Hogeschool Utrecht) & Elwin Savelsbergh (UU and Hogeschool Utrecht)

In our everyday lives, we are surrounded by programmed systems and devices such as traffic light controls, climate control systems and elevators. From both consumer, citizenship, and employability perspectives, it is desirable that pupils gain some insight in the functioning of such programmed systems. In the current practice of primary education in the Netherlands, however, this insight is hardly addressed, and little is known about effective teaching approaches. Therefore, in his PhD-research, Gerard Dummer aims to develop a learning trajectory in which students gain insight in programmed systems.

Although people encounter programmed systems on daily basis, they will view these systems from a user perspective, and they only have a vague notion of the role of the computer in such systems (Dummer, Savelsbergh & Drijvers, in preparation; Koski & De Vries, 2016). In order to gain insight in the inner workings of such systems, people will need to make a switch to view the systems from the ‘computer perspective’. Therefore, a lesson has been developed where participants roleplay the entrance of a car park. In this ‘unplugged’ activity each participant has a specific role: the driver who wants to enter the car park, the entrance button, the car park computer, the barrier and a sensor. The idea is that participants experience in a step-by-step way the instructions that are carried out by the computer as a concrete frame of reference that can be used in the programming lessons.

The activity was found effective with pupils in primary education. In this student research project, we would like to explore the effectiveness of the activity in primary teacher education, where students also need to make the switch to from the user to the computer perspective. The main research question will be: In how far does the unplugged activity help students to reason from the computer perspective? Basing on available instruments from previous research among pupils, you will develop instruments to assess students’ prior understanding, and learning outcomes, and you will use these instruments to evaluate student learning.

Dummer, G., Savelsbergh, E.R. & Drijvers, P. (in preparation). Entering the car park - Primary students' understanding of programmed systems in real world situations.

Koski, M. I., & de Vries, M. (2013). An exploratory study on how primary pupils approach systems. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 23(4), 835-848.

Contact: Ralph Meulenbroeks en Michiel Doorman

Men and women are regularly treated as unequal in society, but also in science. Quite often the presence of gender-bias in science and society hampers girls to become who and what they want to become. This research topic aims to study the issue in the domain of (secondary) science education.

While the overall gender-gap in the Netherlands has been decreasing in the last couple of decades, females have not yet reached an equal footing in the different fields of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). One of the reasons may be the fact that there are less female role models available in educational methods and in popular media.

Role models have been found to have a lasting impact on the feeling of belonging and sense of possibilities for a career in a certain industry or field. They give students the idea that a career path is something that they could pursue and achieve too. Without proper role models in STEM, female students tend to feel that they do not belong in STEM fields and that a career in the fields of physics, computer science and engineering “just isn’t for them” (Kalender et al., 2019).

So in this research topic one can study for instance at what stage of education the gender-gap in STEM becomes apparent. This can be done for the different disciplines, or different school types in the Netherlands or elsewhere in the world, and for different aspects of gender bias in different media, be it visual, audio or written.

Depending on interest in theme / practice / target audience the influence of communication or education (interventions) on gender-issues or gender-bias in education will be studied. An approach suitable for the issue under investigation will be selected: the study may be descriptive or may use a design based approach (production of an intervention) in combination with qualitative interviews with a target audience of choice.

A recent master thesis focused on an explorative study on the availability of role models for physics and computer science students in Dutch high schools. New projects can be developed inspired by the findings of this study. Maybe you would like to design new educational content featuring female role models and test how that influences students’ perception of STEM subjects?

Interested? Please contact Ralph Meulenbroeks or Michiel Doorman for more information: R.F.G.Meulenbroeks@uu.nl; m.doorman@uu.nl

Core literature

Bax, J. (2021) Gender bias in secondary education – An explorative study on the availability of role models for physics and computer science students in Dutch high schools, Master thesis UU.

Kalender, Z. Y., Marshman, E., Schunn, C. D., Nokes-Malach, T. J., & Singh, C. (2019). Why female science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors do not identify with physics: They do not think others see them that way. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15(2), 020148. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.15.020148

Contacts: Liesbeth de Bakker (e.p.h.m.debakker@uu.nl) and Elwin Savelsbergh (e.r.savelsbergh@uu.nl)

This project focuses on critical thinking, and informed opinion forming with regards to science and scientific knowledge in Dutch secondary education pupils of the VMBO.

In today’s society all kinds of opinions circulate about socio scientific issues. Just think of all the ideas on how to deal with Covid-19, the problem of global warming, food health and safety issues etc. Through the established media (TV, radio, newspapers) science-based information often only reaches the higher-educated part of Dutch society. Groups with a lower SES often use different sources. They turn to friends and family, and read messages that reach them through their social media channels.

On these social media channels scientific insights with respect to climate change and health are often distrusted. At the same time sometimes particular scientists or (self-proclaimed) experts are trusted without hesitation. Sometimes uncertainty and nuance disappear in the stories. And the fact that scientists disagree over a fact feeds the idea that “science is just another opinion”. As a result people get the feeling that there are no clear answers and that scientific facts have no added value over other information. They become alienated from science.

Through making an education intervention for Dutch secondary education students of the VMBO, the idea is to stimulate critical thinking and opinion-forming about socio-scientific issues. The target audience of VMBO-pupils is specifically chosen because they are the group of young people that is least likely to get in touch with scientific information and scientific thinking at home or in daily life.

Through the intervention they learn to discern fact from fiction for certain socio-scientific issues, they analyse different (social media) news sources, and learn how science works and what value it can have for them. In addition they are supported to develop their own opinion about a socio-scientific issue (vaccination yes or no, taking the plane for a city trip yes or no, etc.) Ultimately it is hoped they may (re)gain some trust in science.

Attached to the development of the education product a series of interesting, relevant research questions can be posed and studied: questions about how best to stimulate critical thinking in VMBO-pupils? Or, how to best bring across what science is, how it works, and what it can do for you / society? Or questions about trust in sources, and who and what influence the opinion forming process?

On a more detailed level there is the question of how to adapt a tool that teaches teenagers to distinguish fake from real news in a school setting from a Swedish context to a Dutch context. It is going to be used in the project but could do with some detailed research and fine-tuning.

Interested? Please contact Liesbeth de Bakker (e.p.h.m.debakker@uu.nl) or Elwin Savelsbergh (e.r.savelsbergh@uu.nl) for more information.

Core literature

Aschbacher et al. (2010) Is science me? High school students’ identities, participation, and aspirations in science, engineering and medicine. Journal of Res. In Science Teaching, Vol 47, no.5, pp 564-582

Axelsson C-A.W., Guath M., Nygren T. (2021). Learning How to Separate Fake From Real News: Scalable Digital Tutorials Promoting Students’ Civic Online Reasoning. Future Internet. 2021; 13(3):60. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi13030060

Dawson., E. (2014). “Not Designed for Us”: How Science Museums and Science Centers Socially Exclude Low-Income, Minority Ethnic Groups, Science Education, Vol. 98(6), p. 981–1008.

Grasswick, H. E. (2010). Scientific and lay communities: earning epistemic trust through knowledge sharing. Synthese, 177(3), 387-409. doi:10.1007/s11229-010-9789-0

Taragin-Zeller et al. (2020) Public engagement with science among religious minorities: Lessons from COVID-19. Science Communication 2020, Vol.42(5) 643-678

Contact: Ralph Meulenbroeks (r.f.g.meulenbroeks@uu.nl)

As the global COVID-19 pandemic forced a sudden transition to emergency online education in early 2020, academic discourse quickly shifted to focus on the new situation and what could be learned from it (Eringfield, 2021). A recent review study gives an overview of the discourse on education during the pandemic in publications that appeared in the top-50 journals on the Clarivate Education list in the period April 2020–May 2021 (Meulenbroeks et al, 2021). Based on a final selection of 63 articles and 12 editorials, mostly on higher education, five main themes were identified: affect, teaching practice, teaching context, achievement and assessment, and equity. The academic discourse in these publications indicates that the emergency situation exacerbated previously existing issues: mental distress was observed to rise sharply for all stakeholders and gaps in access to education between different social groups widened. In response, teachers revisited the core values of education to guide them in approaching online teaching. Management focused less on procedures and communicated in a more human and empathic way.

The acute interconnectedness experienced during the pandemic can be used to develop a pedagogy of care in which support is explicitly organized on both socio-emotional and academic levels. There is however, at the moment almost no research in this field. How can this pedagogy of care be defined and implemented? Self-determination theory and basic need satisfaction seem to be a good candidates for a theoretical background, but this needs to be investigated further. And then there is the implementation part? How can that be done at different levels of education?

In this really exciting and possibly very high-impact field, there is place for one or two master students. Do you care? Please contact: r.f.g.meulenbroeks@uu.nl.

Eringfeld, S. (2021). Higher education and its post-coronial future: utopian hopes and dystopian fears at Cambridge University during Covid-19. Studies in Higher Education, 46(1), 146–157. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1859681

Meulenbroeks, R., Reijerkerk, M., Angerer, E., Pieters, T., and Bakker, A. (2021) Academic discourse on education during the early part of the pandemic. Submitted to Studies in Higher Education

The weather report is so much part of our daily lives, that we almost forget that it is also a highly sophisticated piece of science communication. Whether it is the printed weather forecast in newspapers or the dynamic depictions online or on TV, weather reports communicate complex scientific scenarios with carefully assessed levels of uncertainty. The format of weather reports have changed over time and differ across various media platforms. We challenge you to investigate these changes by looking at the people involved, the content, and/or the effects. The format of weather reports in newspapers, radio, television, online and in apps has been constantly adapted to changing audiences.

We propose to analyze the communication aspects of weather reports. Research topics could include, for example:

Differences in visualization strategies in weather reports in different media
How weather reports have changed over time
changing references to climate and climate change in weather reports in recent decades
how levels of (un)certainty in weather forecasts are communicated, both visually and textually
public understanding/interpretations of / trust in weather reports and forecasts

But other approaches are also possible. Your suggestions are welcome!

Supervisors: Mark Bos and David Baneke

Literature:

Compton, J. (2018). When weather forecasters are wrong: Image repair and public rhetoric after severe weather. Science Communication, 40(6), 778-788.

Daipha, Phaedra. Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Fine, Gary Alan. Authors of the Storm: Meteorologists and the Culture of Prediction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Gerst, M. D., Kenney, M. A., Baer, A. E., Speciale, A., Wolfinger, J. F., Gottschalck, J., ... & Dewitt, D. (2020). Using visualization science to improve expert and public understanding of probabilistic temperature and precipitation outlooks. Weather, Climate, and Society, 12(1), 117-133.

Gigerenzer, Gerd, Ralph Hertwig, Eva van den Broek, Barbara Fasolo, and Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos. “‘A 30% Chance of Rain Tomorrow’: How Does the Public Understand Probabilistic Weather Forecasts?” Risk Analysis 25, no. 3 (2005): 623–29.

Multidisciplinary projects

Investigation of the use of digital fabrication technologies for learning (e.g., 3D printing, laser cutting) in primary/secondary education

Description

Key Literature

*Pedagogies and emerging technologies in education

Thematic content analysis

Pedagogical content knowledge and TPACK

Computational design and 3D printing as a means for fostering mathematical and computational thinking

Key Literature

Computational Thinking Assessment

Pedagogies

Evaluation of computational design learning activities

A design-based learning approach to science education

Key literature:

Pedagogies, design, and technology in education:

Design practices and engineering in mathematics and science:

Methods

Pedagogical content knowledge

Benefits and challenges of exploring and comparing physical and virtual experiments in parallel to cultivate scientific practices

Key literature

Bifocal Modeling Framework

Key studies:

How best to support sci com students to become more inclusive communicators

Core literature

Optimize the communication of a Citizen Science project; Infectieradar at RIVM

Seeing concepts: Joint attention between a student and a teacher

Scientific discourse in online and hybrid education

Teachers’ self-efficacy for Education for Sustainable Development

Teaching and learning science in the context of citizen science

Interacting with the crowd, how can students understand complex models

Understanding models in science

Does self-determined teaching lead to self-determined learning?

Animated educational videos for science and mathematics

The subject cluster choice (profielkeuze): based on which type of motivation?

Fostering intrinsic motivation in students by inquiry based learning

Fostering responsible citizenship: socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL) in science education

Implementing inquiry-based learning in science and mathematics education

Drawing-based modelling in lower grade science education

Creating scientific practices with science museums

Effect of an unplugged activity on elementary teachers’ understanding of programmed systems

Gender bias in (secondary) STEM education

Science and I (Dutch sec ed VMBO level)

Core literature

Towards a pedagogy of care

Forecasting the Future: the weather report as science communication

Design and evaluation of a new platform for computer science education for Dutch high schools

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