Larry Yore

University of Victoria | UVIC · Faculty of Education

This epilogue for the special issue consists of brief reviews related to reading in language arts, science, and mathematics research areas; summaries of the nine contributions; themes arising from a cross-case comparison of the contributions; and further research, curriculum, and instructional considerations. The introduction and articles not only...

This chapter summarizes the characteristics of science education in Canada and identifies pressing issues deserving further consideration, development, and research. Although Canada borders the United States, and the two nations share many economic and cultural relationships, Canada is a unique country with its own approaches to science education....

There is a dearth of studies in science education that are both comprehensive and focused on rural schools. Thus, this brief is in the form of a research report on the impact of an externally funded, five-year professional development project. The project involved approximately 1500 teachers on the student achievement of approximately 20,000 K-6 st...

This commentary situates, summarizes, and critiques the global attempts, as documented in this book, to address the complex language/literacy-science education problem space involving curriculum, integrated learning, classroom practices, challenges, instruction embedded in an inquiry-oriented context, and teacher education and development issues fo...

This study of three science teachers’ lessons on heat and temperature seeks to characterise classroom talk that highlighted the ways language is used and to examine the nature of the language demands revealed in constructing, negotiating, arguing and communicating science ideas. The transcripts from the entire instructional units for these teachers...

There appears to be a complex network of cognitive and affective factors that influence students? decisions to study science and motivate their choices to engage in science-oriented careers. This study explored 330 Taiwanese senior high school students? awareness of their science teacher?s learning leadership and how it relates to the students? att...

This reflection considers the array of women, men, and events that have contributed to the research and development of science education in Taiwan during the last 50 years. The chapter explores the documents, programs, institutions, and scholars that have influenced science education in Taiwan at the local, national, and international levels. In th...

In the context of current trends in early language education, writing has now become an important part of first-grade language instruction. This study examined the value of two different sets of variables as predictors of first-grade writing achievement. One set, consisting of six variables measuring cognitive development, was found not to predict...

The effects of global cognitive development, sex, and word abstractness on young readers' word recognition were explored. A three-way analysis of variance on word recognition scores indicated that noun words were recognized more frequently than non-noun words (p = 0.01): subjects with high cognitive development recognized more words than children w...

Comic books possessing the features of humour, narrative, and visual representation are deemed as a potential medium for science communication; however, empirical studies exploring the effects of comics are scarce. The purposes of this study were to examine and compare the impacts of a comic book and a text booklet on conveying the concepts of nano...

Common core standards, interdisciplinary education, and discipline-specific literacy are common international education reforms. The constructive–interpretative language arts pairs (speaking–listening, writing–reading, representing–viewing) and the communication, construction, and persuasion functions of language are central in these movements. Thi...

This study investigates how affective and self-related factors impact participation in science learning and environmental awareness and responsibility. Using PISA 2006 datasets from Taiwan and Canada having similar level of science competency, the model for this study verifies and expands an earlier model by examining the relationships among scienc...

This chapter describes how diversity and consistency are central features of multiculturalism in Canada and schooling across the 13 jurisdictions of the Canadian federation. Mathematics, reading, and science achievement gaps were explored using performance differences in comparison with other countries (Program of International Student Assessment (...

This study investigated a model of the associations between personality traits of male and female college students in Taiwan and their self-worth using structural equation modeling (SEM). College students (1,305 males and 1,494 females) were stratified randomly selected from 12 universities to complete the College Students Questionnaire. SEM result...

Scientific literacy for all students (i.e., mainstream literacy for citizenship) has been the goal for many of the national and international reforms in science for more than 20 years. However, more recent efforts have been devoted to meeting global demands for a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce pipeline by increas...

The biggest challenges facing science education have possibly been accessibility and relevance to its target audiences-challenges that have become more pronounced with the increasingly multicultural nature of teaching and learning environments. How does one render accessible a field of inquiry that has often been viewed as unnatural, difficult, or...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the quality, evolution, and position of university students’ argumentation about organic agriculture over a 4-week argument–critique–argument e-learning experience embedded in a first year university biology course. The participants (N = 43) were classified into three groups based on their epistemologica...

This paper is a report of the impact of an externally funded, multiyear systemic reform project on students' science achievement on a modified version of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test in 33 small, rural school districts in two Midwest states. The systemic reform effort utilized a cascading leadership strategy of...

Science literacy for all is the central goal of science education reforms, and there is a growing importance of the language arts in science. Furthermore, there are strong calls for teacher professionalism and self-directed professional learning that involve evidence-based best practices. This raises questions about whether science teaching journal...

Many definitions of science literacy have focused on understanding science (Vision I) and science applications in various relevant situations (Vision II). Existing definitions represent a spectrum of views along the general to the elite. The contemporary Vision III of Science Literacy For All proposed here articulates the fundamental and derived se...

This paper is a report of a study that examines the relationship between teacher participation in a multi-year, K–6 professional development effort and the “high stakes” science test scores of different student groups in 33 rural mid-west school districts in the USA. The professional development program involved 1,269 elementary school teachers and...

This chapter argues that the move toward constructivism has necessitated critical considerations of knowledge about thinking, awareness of personal thinking resources, ability to control use of these resources, and the willingness to enact and reflect on these resources in constructing valid and justified understandings and actions. These considera...

This paper is a report of a quasi-experimental study on the impact of a systemic 5-year, K-6 professional development (PD) project on the ‘high stakes’ achievement test scores of different student groups in rural mid-west school districts in the USA. The PD programme utilized regional summer workshops, district-based leadership teams and distance d...

The Pacific CRYSTAL Centre for Scientific and Technological Literacy was proposed knowing that many people in the academic and educational communities did not have or share common definitions of scientific literacy and mathematical literacy (also known as numeracy) and that the efforts to define and share technological, computer science, and engine...

Pacific CRYSTAL involved a diverse collection of investigators and projects within the first-ever Centres for Research into Youth, Science Teaching and Learning (CRYSTAL) funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Being a new endeavour for the funding agency and many of the researchers—in terms of the scope a...

There is a need for research involving professional development (PD) and implementation of the National Science Education Standards (NSES; National Research Council [NRC], 1996) that systematically considers the theoretical and practical demands placed on decision makers, teachers, and researchers. However, few projects go beyond a single site to m...

The University of Victoria Pacific Centre for Scientific and Technological Literacy is one of five Centres for Research into Youth, Science Teaching and Learning (CRYSTAL) funded for 5 years (2005–2010) by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Canada (NSERC). Pacific CRYSTAL intended to promote scientific, mathematical, and technolo...

From 2005 to 2010 Pacific CRYSTAL (Centre for Research in Youth Science Teaching and Learning) has been engaged in community-based research fostering teacher leadership in innovative science education through a variety of approaches to teacher professional development. Pacific CRYSTAL is a University of Victoria based, NSERC funded project founded...

The Common Framework of Science Learning Outcomes (Council of Ministers of Education, Canada [CMEC], 1997) is a nationally developed curriculum document generated from the Pan-Canadian Protocol for Collaboration on School Curriculum—an initiative of the CMEC with the intent of harmonization learning goals and science instruction in Canadian schools...

Evidence-based policies, decisions, and practices are highly valued and underachieved in the international mathematics and science education reforms. Many in the mathematics and science education research communities lament the lack of influence that research results have on the education profession, schools, and teaching. Academic research done in...

This special edition of IJMSE focuses on the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) project now that it has completed a full cycle of administration—reading, mathematics, and science—to look at ways in which PISA has been used in participating countries and with what consequences, and to identify potential research and policy directio...

Parental involvement in schools has been documented as a positive influence on children's achievement, attendance, attitudes, behavior, and graduation rate, regardless of cultural background, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (National Parents and Teachers Association, 1998). Unfortunately, it has been difficult in today's world of working parent...

Learning from text with embedded monitoring (questions) and regulating (prescriptive feedback) adjuncts was examined relative to pretest, posttest, and retention science achievement, time-on-task, and efficiency (learning or retention gains per time-on-task). Grade nine students (n = 125) with varying degrees of prior knowledge were randomly assign...

The Iowa Assessment Project was funded by the National Science Foundation to explore the feasibility of combining the expertise of science teachers, science educators, and test developers to build innovative performance assessments that complement traditional, norm-referenced, multiple-choice science tests. The science teachers, graduate students,...

In the last 15 years (1994–2009), there has been considerable increased research interest in: (1) characterising the distinctive nature and constitutive elements of science literacy and (2) investigating classroom practices or necessary conditions that enable students to acquire this disciplinary capacity. This raises the question of the extent to...

The Explicit Literacy Instruction Embedded in Middle School Science Classrooms project was initiated in the spring of 2005 at the request of a small group of teachers from two middle schools in a Victoria, British Columbia (BC), school district that had French immersion and English programs of instruction in Grades 6, 7, and 8. A third middle schoo...

Curiosity-driven research has traditionally investigated problems, issues, and challenges through a variety of research designs to match the research foci without many formal constraints. The character of those designs has been the venue of the researchers, to some degree the funding agency, and the research setting. The creative challenge for the...

The fields of education, health sciences, and social sciences internationally have faced calls for better understanding of available datasets and research results from a variety of political, professional, and academic communities. Politicians, bureaucrats, administrators, and other managers desire compelling, evidencebased results and generalizati...

Two recent policies in the United States illustrate the potential connection. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) reauthorized a number of federal programs aiming to improve the performance of primary and secondary schools by increasing the standards of accountability for states, school districts, and schools as well as providing pare...

The debates continued as both purist quantitative and qualitative researchers conducted serial investigations with little visible growth and without apparent utilization of and connection to experiences and results from earlier inquiries. This can be seen in the research literature where, for example, you can find sequences of aptitude— treatment—i...

Literacy, language, and science education research is much like quilting, in which small pieces of fabric are stitched together into repeated units (blocks) to produce a functional bedcovering or artistic wallhanging of a predetermined size and shape. The repeated units—blocks—are normally prescribed and uniform squares of fixed dimensions. Each bl...

This book flowed from the deliberations of the 2nd Island Conference (held at Dunsmuir Lodge in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) and several American Statistical Association and National Association for Research in Science Teaching symposia in the United States that examined the ramifications of the Gold Standard for educational research found i...

This book addresses implications for "Gold Standards" of education research-especially in science education and literacy. These standards are meant to provide evidence-based educational outcomes found effective in randomized controlled trials, following patterns of evidence used in medical research. Similar expectations have emerged in other countr...

Pauline Chinn and Brian Hand, both well-established science educators interested in the role that language plays in doing and learning science but with distinctly different stances, provide a glimpse into an ongoing conversation and deliberation over 18 months about what does it mean to come to know in science and how does this concept of science t...

Introduction to Special Issue of L1 –Educational Studies in Language and Literature on Sceince Literacy

It is important that the first, native, home, or mother tongue language (L1), cultural and personal beliefs, ontological assumptions, and epistemological beliefs of students be explicitly considered in teaching and learning environments where a different language of instruction (L2) and an English-dominated scientific enterprise (L3) are commonplac...

Large-scale assessments of student achievement provide a window into the broadly defined concepts of literacy and generate information about levels and types of student achievement in relation to some of the correlates of learning, such as student background, attitudes, and perceptions, and perhaps school and home characteristics. This paper provid...

This opening article of the Special Issue makes an argument for parallel definitions of scientific literacy and mathematical literacy that have shared features: importance of general cognitive and metacognitive abilities and reasoning/thinking and discipline-specific language, habits-of-mind/emotional dispositions, and information communication tec...

In this final article, we briefly review and synthesize the science and language research and practice that arose from the current literature and presentations at an international conference, referred to as the first "Island Conference". We add to the synthesis of the articles the conference deliberations and on-going discussions of the field and a...

This autobiographical case study of two scientists involved in earlier studies documents a profile of each scientist. These profiles were used to develop semi‐structured interview protocols and email surveys for each scientist. The central issues of these data collections were whether these modern, evaluativist scientists believe that the review–re...

Geographic information literacy (GIL) is defined as the possession of concepts, abilities and habits of mind that allow an individual to understand and use geographic information properly. This paper reports the results of an online survey undertaken to get expert input into specifying the concepts and abilities associated with GIL that should be i...

This case study of a midwestern school districts reform effort explored the treatment fidelity of the Science: Parents, Activities, and Literature (Science PALs) project. Data were collected from the perspectives of three stakeholders: students, school district, and parents. Students and school district supervisors perceptions indicated that teache...

The multicultural nature of todays elementary school classrooms in Australia, Europe, and North America bring interesting cultural and linguistic influences to constructivist-oriented environmental education programs. Students prior knowledge, beliefs, values, and attitudes might affect their understandings about and actions toward the environment....

This article is about one school district's effort to reform its elementary science curriculum through a program of professional development called Science, Parents, Activities and Literature (Science PALs). The differential exposure of the district's K–6 teachers to Science PALs and differences in how well teachers implemented Science PALs-type in...

This multiple case study examined the coauthorship process in research laboratories of different university departments. The study focused on two cases comprising five writing teams, one in biochemistry and microbiology and four in earth and ocean sciences. The role of the research supervisor, the role of the student (graduate and postgraduate), th...

From the editors' introduction: “Although single-discipline investigations are arguably still the norm in most education research, government funding agencies worldwide have stepped up the call over the last several years for collaborations that span more than one field of inquiry. A major assumption behind this call is that multidisciplinary resea...

Written and oral communications and the processes of writing and reading are highly valued within the scientific community; scientists who communicate well are successful in gaining recognition and support from members of their own communities, the research funding agencies, and the wider society. Yet how do scientists achieve this proficiency? Are...

This review, written to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the International Journal of Science Education, revealed a period of changes in the theoretical views of the language arts, the perceived roles of language in science education, and the research approaches used to investigate oral and written language in science, science teaching, and learni...

The role of writing in learning secondary science has received increasing research focus over the last decade. This study aimed to identify students’ drafting strategies when they wrote for a readership other than their teacher, as well as their perceptions of the value of this task. The findings indicated that students perceived this writing proce...

This study attempted to establish an image of a science writer based on a synthesis of writing theory, models, and research literature on academic writing in science and other disciplines and to contrast this image with an actual prototypical image of scientists as writers of science. The synthesis was used to develop a questionnaire to assess scie...

This multiple case study examined the co-authorship process in two research laboratories of different university science departments. The study focused on five writing teams, one in Biochemistry and Microbiology and four in Earth and Ocean Sciences. The role of the researcher supervisor, the role of the student (graduate and post-graduate), the int...

This study reports on the effects of a major reform initiative which was implemented in the Iowa City Community Schools District. The Science: Parents, Activities, and Literature (Science PALs) Project was launched in 1994 to reform the district's elementary science program. It was designed to increase teacher effectiveness by providing a comprehen...

Recent enlarged accounts of science literacy emphasize that student learning should move beyond a narrow focus on technical knowledge to an understanding of the nature, rationale and procedures of science as well as a commitment and capacity to communicate scientific understandings to diverse readerships. This chapter explores the implications of t...

Reading and writing in science have been frequently maligned but infrequently studied since the 1960s move toward hands-on science. Current interest in the printed-based language arts in science is supported by contemporary educational reforms and the realization that simply doing more hands-on activities may not improve meaningful learning. Studen...

Science education reforms in Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, and the United States promote a constructivist pedagogy of science leading to a contemporary view of science literacy. The reform documents provide somewhat fuzzy descriptions of critical philosophical, epistemological and pedagogical dimensions and underlying assumptions and rel...

This study investigated the correlations between metacognition and comprehension of science text and the differential effects of reading ability and gender on the acquisition of metacognition and science reading comprehension among an intact group of 27 students. A single-group pretest/posttest design was carried out over a 22-week instructional pe...

This paper synthesizes research on the value of writing in learning science at all grade levels. Breakthroughs and barriers to the effective use of writing to learn science are discussed. Differences between elementary and secondary teachers are considered with regard to background in language arts, understanding of the writing process, and the eng...