Joseph Krajcik

University of Iowa

Ph.D.

Learning Science

Joseph Krajcik, Barbara Schneider, et al.

2019

Countries around the world are experiencing a decline in science engagement, especially among minority groups, which ultimately can affect their pathway into STEM careers. One attempt to address this dilemma is a $3.6 million international project funded by the National Science Foundation, the first of its kind to directly address science learning and instruction aligned with new country-specific science standards. This book tells the story of that research project as it is implemented in physics and chemistry classrooms across the United States and Finland, involving thousands of students at the secondary school level.

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Synergy and students’ explanations: Exploring the role of generic and content-specific scaffolds

Ibrahim Delen, Joseph Krajcik

2016

In this study, we explored how a teacher used a new mobile application that enables students to collect data inside and outside the classroom, and then use the data to create scientific explanations by using claim-evidence-reasoning framework. Previous technologies designed to support scientific explanations focused on how these programs improve students’ scientific explanations, but these programs ignored how scientific explanation applications can support teacher practices. Thus, to increase our knowledge about using mobile devices in education, this study aims to portray the synergy with an emphasis on a teacher’s practices when using mobile devices in 2 different units (water quality and plants). Synergy can be thought of as various scaffolds (scaffolds in the mobile application and the teacher support) working together to enable students to support creating explanations when using the mobile application. The findings of this study showed that the decrease in the teacher’s support for claims did not affect the quality of the students’ claims. On the other hand, the quality of students’ reasoning was linked with the teacher’s practices. This suggests that when supporting students’ explanations, focusing on components that students find challenging would benefit students’ construction of explanations. To achieve synergy in this process, the collaboration between teacher’s practices, professional development days, and scaffolds designed to support the teacher played a crucial role in aiding students in creating explanations.

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Using mobile devices to connect teachers and museum educators

Ibrahim Delen, Joseph Krajcik

2016

The use of mobile devices is increasing rapidly as a potential tool for science teaching. In this study, five educators (three middle school teachers and two museum educators) used a mobile application that supported the development of a driving question. Previous studies have noted that teachers make little effort to connect learning experiences between classrooms and museums, and few studies have focused on creating connections between teachers and museum educators. In this study, teachers and museum educators created an investigation together by designing a driving question in conjunction with the research group before field trips. During field trips, students collected their own data using iPods or iPads to take pictures or record videos of the exhibits. When students returned to the school, they used the museum data with their peers as they tried to answer the driving question. After completing the field trips, five educators were interviewed to investigate their experiences with designing driving questions and using mobile devices. Besides supporting students in data collection during the field trip, using mobile devices helped teachers to get the museum back to the classroom. Designing the driving question supported museum educators and teachers to plan the field trip collaboratively.

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