Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments is not just about what takes place in literary classrooms. Settings do have a strong influence on student learning both directly and indirectly. These spaces may include the home, the workplace, science centers, libraries, that is, contexts that entail diverse social, physical, psychological, and pedagogical variables that facilitate learning, for example, by grouping desks in specific ways, utilizing audio, visual, and digital technologies. Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments puts together a series of empirical research studies on the different locations of teaching and learning. These studies represent literary learning environment throughout the world, including Brazil, the USA, China, Canada, Japan and several European countries such as the Netherlands, Ukraine, the UK and Malta. The studies reported describe quantitative and/or qualitative research and cover pre-primary, primary, high school, college, university, and lifelong learning environments. They refresh the enigmatic ambience that often surrounds the teaching and learning that goes on in literary studies and offer transparent, useful and replicable research and practice. Students and teachers alike are encouraged to take them and own them.

Learning environment research has undergone considerable growth in the past thirty years and has now reached a stage of notable diversity and internationalization. Earlier studies often used questionnaires to assess learning environments, but today both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Many contemporary studies are a productive combination of these two approaches.This volume brings together prominent educators and researchers from around the world to share their contemporary research on educational learning environments. The chapters provide information on recent trends and developments and effective applications of different methods to improve teaching and learning. The book will be a critical and specialized source that describes recent advances in learning environment studies across all continents. The contributors come from Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, and the USA.

The Science of Learning: A Systems Theory Approach provides authoritative, comprehensive, learner-centric reviews and discussions of theories and research on learning processes, instructional approaches, and the uses of instructional media. It includes over 600 references to the most influential theoretical and empirical literature in the field. It also provides discussions on the scientific method and how to apply science and scientific thinking to the study of learning, the development of instruction, and the evaluation of instructional programs. The systems-theory orientation provided in the book helps the reader understand the diverse data on learning and helps to integrate these data into a rich knowledge base. The book also summarizes guidance on the application of learning research to enhance learning effectiveness and illustrates this guidance with real-world examples.

In an age where we are inundated with information, the ability to discern verifiable information to make proper decisions and solve problems is ever more critical. Modern science, which espouses a systematic approach to making “inferences,” requires a certain mindset that allows for a degree of comfort with uncertainty. This book offers inspirations and ideas for cultivating the proper mindset for the studying, teaching, and practicing of science that will be useful for those new to as well as familiar with the field. Although a paradigm shift from traditional instruction is suggested in the National Framework for K-12 science, this volume is intended to help educators develop a personal mental framework in which to transition from a teacher-centered, didactical approach to a student-centered, evidence-guided curriculum. While the topics of the book derive from currently published literature on STEM education as they relate to the National Framework for K-12 Science and the Three-Dimensional science instruction embedded in the Next Generation Science Standards, this book also examines these topics in the context of a new societal age posited as the “Age of Inference” and addresses how to make sense of the ever-increasing deluge of information that we are experiencing by having a scientific and properly discerning mindset. ENDORSEMENTS: "This volume takes on one of the thorniest existential problems of our time, the contradiction between the exponentially growing amount of information that individuals have access to, and the diminished capacity of those individuals to understand it. Its chapters provide the reader with an introduction to the relationship between knowledge, science, and inference; needed new approaches to learning science in our new data rich world; and a discussion of what we can and must do to reduce or eliminate the growing gap between the inference have’s and have nots. It is not too much to say that how we resolve the issues outlined in this volume will determine the future of our species on this planet." — Joseph L. Graves Jr., Professor of Biological Sciences North Carolina A&T State University, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science: Biological Sciences, Author of: The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium "Big data is not enough for addressing dangers to the environment or tackling threats to democracy; we need the ability to draw sound inferences from the data. Cultivating a scientific mindset requires fundamental changes to the way we teach and learn. This important and well -written volume shows how." — Ashok Goel, Professor of Computer Science and Human Centered Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. Editor of AI Magazine Founding Editor of AAAI’s Interactive AI Magazine "If you are a science teacher concerned about the implications of information overload, analysis paralysis, and intellectual complacency on our health, economic future, and democracy, then I recommend this book." — Michael Svec, Professor for Physics and Astronomy Education, Furman University, Fulbright Scholar to Czech Republic

Building on the foundation set in Volume I—a landmark synthesis of research in the field—Volume II is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art new volume highlighting new and emerging research perspectives. The contributors, all experts in their research areas, represent the international and gender diversity in the science education research community. The volume is organized around six themes: theory and methods of science education research; science learning; culture, gender, and society and science learning; science teaching; curriculum and assessment in science; science teacher education. Each chapter presents an integrative review of the research on the topic it addresses—pulling together the existing research, working to understand the historical trends and patterns in that body of scholarship, describing how the issue is conceptualized within the literature, how methods and theories have shaped the outcomes of the research, and where the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps are in the literature. Providing guidance to science education faculty and graduate students and leading to new insights and directions for future research, the Handbook of Research on Science Education, Volume II is an essential resource for the entire science education community.

This volume focuses on the implications of digital technologies for educators and educational decision makers that are not widely represented in the literature. The chapters contained in the volume are based on the presentations at the 2020 edition of the CELDA conference and cover multiple developments in the field such as deploying learning technologies, proposing pedagogical approaches and practices to address digital transformation, and presenting case studies of specific technologies and contexts. The chapters form a lively debate and provide a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of learning technologies designed to improve the learning process and the experience of the students as well as to develop key competences.

According to John Dewey, Seymour Papert, Donald Schon, and Allan Collins, school activities, to be authentic, need to share key features with those worlds about which they teach. This book documents learning and teaching in open-inquiry learning environments, designed with the precepts of these educational thinkers in mind. The book is thus a first-hand report of knowing and learning by individuals and groups in complex open-inquiry learning environments in science. As such, it contributes to the emerging literature in this field. Secondly, it exemplifies research methods for studying such complex learning environments. The reader is thus encouraged not only to take the research findings as such, but to reflect on the process of arriving at these findings. Finally, the book is also an example of knowledge constructed by a teacher-researcher, and thus a model for teacher-researcher activity.