Background: A key question in K-12 STEM education is how best to guide students as they engage in exploratory learning activities so that students develop transferable knowledge. We investigated this question in a study of teacher talk guidance of an exploratory activity called Invention. In this study, teachers worked one-on-one with students, guiding them as they attempted to invent ratio-based equations of physical science phenomena. We applied the interactive, constructive, active, and passive (ICAP) framework as a theoretical lens through which to explore different forms of teacher talk guidance and resulting student talk. The ICAP hypothesis predicts that constructive engagement leads to greater learning than active engagement, which in turn leads to greater learning than passive engagement. However, students do not always enact the type of cognitive engagement that teachers prompt. In this paper, we work towards three goals: (1) to explore the forms of cognitive engagement prompted by teachers and enacted by students in their talk, (2) to test the ICAP hypothesis in the novel context of teacher-student dialog during Invention, and (3) to identify effective forms of teacher talk guidance for Invention activities and other exploratory STEM learning tasks. Results: While the majority of student talk was active, teachers produced an even distribution of constructive, active, and passive prompts. Teacher and student talk types tended to align, such that students often responded with the type of cognitive engagement teachers invited, with the exception of passive talk. In general, teacher talk showed the most robust relationship with students' abilities to transfer, while teacher-student dialog demonstrated a weaker relationship with transfer, and student talk was not significantly related to transfer. Some evidence for the ICAP hypothesis was found, most prominently in teacher talk, where constructive prompts positively predicted transfer, active prompts were not related to transfer, and passive prompts negatively predicted transfer. Conclusions:This research implies that teachers should use a large proportion of constructive prompts and relatively few passive ones when guiding students through Invention tasks, when the goal is to provoke transfer of learning to novel contexts. This work also extends the CAP portion of the ICAP hypothesis to teacher-student dialog and underscores the teacher's critical role in encouraging students to cognitively engage with exploratory STEM tasks in effective ways.

A persistent problem in engineering-focused science instruction is the "design-science gap," whereby learners focus on building successful engineering products, instead of focusing on the relevant scientific principles. This research explores (a) whether integrating contrasting cases into engineering activities can impact how deeply learners notice scientific structures both within the engineering task and in novel transfer contexts, and (b) whether the perceptual process of noticing is related to task performance and transfer. In Study 1, 41 adults designed and built a Lego cantilever, which relates to the physics concept center-ofmass. Learners who analyzed contrasting cases that highlighted the underlying structure of center-of-mass noticed that structure more deeply, compared with a no cases condition. Although both conditions performed similarly on the engineering task, learners who noticed on a deeper level performed better, regardless of condition. In a second study with 63 adults, the same two conditions were compared with a single cases condition. The contrasting cases condition demonstrated superior transfer to near but novel contexts. Moreover, noticing predicted performance and far transfer, regardless of condition. Results imply that (a) contrasting cases enhance near transfer from engineering activities and (b) noticing plays a key role in performance in and transfer from engineering activities. K E Y W O R D S contrasting cases, engineering, perceptual learning, physics, transfer Science Education. 2019;103:440-471. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sce 440 |

No abstract

No abstract

It is difficult to motivate learners to seek out and persist at challenging learning tasks where failure is likely. However, in game environments, people seem highly motivated to engage with challenges and respond productively to failure. Many typical game features purportedly enhance intrinsic motivation and self‐efficacy, which should improve students’ reactions to challenge and failure, which should in turn enhance learning. An experimental study with early middle school students tested these assumptions by comparing a “Full” version of a typical, commercial programming game to a “Minimal” version of the same game where common game features such as narrative, performance metrics, high‐quality graphics, and sound were removed. In contrast to our hypotheses, players of the Full Game were less likely to choose coding challenges, were less tolerant of coding failures and gained less coding knowledge. Intrinsic motivation and self‐efficacy did not differ between conditions. Correlational analyses showed that failure tolerance and challenge seeking may critically affect learning from educational games. The current study offers an existence proof that some common game features can hinder players' failure tolerance, challenge‐seeking and learning, in certain game contexts. Future research should isolate the effects of individual game features, test generalizability and explore which contextual variables influence the findings.