Contribution: Model-based learning improves systems thinking (ST) based on students’ prior knowledge and gender. Relations were found between textual, visual, and mixed question types and student achievements. Background: ST is essential to judicious decision-making and problem-solving. Undergraduate students can be taught to apply better ST, and analysis of their online systems modeling processes can improve their ST. Research Questions: 1) What is the effect, if any, of online learning on the ST and conceptual modeling skill levels of undergraduate engineering students? 2) What differences are there, if any, between students’ ST, conceptual modeling, and scores in textual, visual, and mixed question types based on their prior knowledge levels? and 3) Are there any gender differences in student performance, and if so, what are they? Methodology: The research participants were 157 undergraduate engineering students who took part in a mandatory second-year course, during which data were collected and analyzed quantitatively. Findings: Students with disparate prior knowledge differed significantly from each other in their overall ST mean score and in the mean scores of the various question types. Gender differences in ST and its relative improvement were also found.

This theoretical paper focuses on the social processes of public engagement with science and their implications for science education. The core of our argument is that science education should help people become better at evaluating, using, and curating their epistemic networks to make personal and civic decisions and to understand the natural world. In this context, an epistemic network is a set of people who support sensemaking by providing new information and aiding in the interpretation and reconstruction of scientific knowledge in context. We believe epistemic networks are an important consideration for science education, particularly when misinformation plays an outsized role in the cultural landscape. Understanding when epistemic networks are useful and how science education should incorporate them requires a clear sense of how they work in different contexts. We start by contrasting the inevitably social nature of all public engagement with science with the particularly social or interpersonal nature of some public engagement with science. We draw on research from education, communication, and science and technology studies to develop the idea of an epistemic network and to describe two basic types: the individual resource network and the collective action network. We illustrate each type with an extended example that is hypothetical but informed by both research and experience. Finally, we discuss how science education can incorporate epistemic networks, as well as the challenges inherent in that educational strategy.

The traditional models of reading development describe how language processing and word decoding contribute to reading comprehension and how impairments in word decoding, a defining feature of dyslexia, affect reading comprehension outcomes. However, these models do not include word and sentence reading (contextual reading) fluency, both of which engage executive functions, with notably decreased performance in children with dyslexia. In the current study, we compared cortical thickness and sulcal depth (CT/SD) in the cingulo-opercular (CO) executive functions brain network in children with dyslexia and typical readers and examined associations with word vs. contextual reading fluency. Overall, CT was lower in insular regions and higher in parietal and caudal anterior cingulate cortex regions in children with dyslexia. Children with dyslexia showed positive correlations between word reading fluency and CT/SD in insular regions, whereas no significant correlations were observed in typical readers. For sentence reading fluency, negative correlations with CT/SD were found in insular regions in children with dyslexia, while positive correlations with SD were found in insular regions in typical readers. These results demonstrate the differential relations between word and sentence reading fluency and anatomical circuitry supporting executive functions in children with dyslexia vs. typical readers. It also suggests that word and sentence reading fluency, relate to morphology of executive function-related regions in children with dyslexia, whereas in typical readers, only sentence reading fluency relates to morphology of executive function regions. The results also highlight the role of the insula within the CO network in reading fluency. Here we suggest that word and sentence reading fluency are distinct components of reading that should each be included in the Simple View of Reading traditional model.

Orit Hazzan and Avital Binah-Pollak consider how the data science perspective helped to predict the transformation of Israel’s 2023 social protest. Think about your most personal ritualistic event—walking your dog, grocery shopping, or a weekly meetup with your friends. Most likely it takes place in the same place, close to home, with the same people, and at a certain frequency. Rituals occur also on the social level; for example, Sunday Mass, birthday parties, and sports competitions.

Well-designed, dialogic, and interdisciplinary learning opportunities in science related disciplines can promote many educational goals. The difficulty lies in providing these opportunities in schools. Can out-of-school focus days fill the void? Here, we performed a mixed methods study to discover how middle school learners perceive focus days that included dialogic, interdisciplinary activities in mathematics, science, and philosophy, all around socio-scientific dilemmas. We also sought to understand the experiences’ impact on learners’ self-perceived dialogic engagement in the school classroom. We focused on (1) learners’ perceptions and recollections of the dialogic climate during the focus days; (2) the perceived contribution of the three disciplines (mathematics, science and philosophy) to the interdisciplinary focus days; and (3) the focus days’ effects on the dialogic climate in the everyday school environment. Our findings suggest that (1) learners generally considered the focus days as enjoyable and different than their everyday school experience; (2) students did not consider each discipline equally relevant to the focus days’ main topics; and (3) the effects of the focus days were localized, that is, no impact was found on the dialogic climate at school. We discuss implications for promoting interdisciplinary, dialogic science related learning in secondary schools.

Generative AI has the potential to become disruptive technology for computer science education. Therefore, computer science educators must be familiar with the threats they should deal with and with the opportunities that generative-AI opens for the computer science education community. In the workshop, we explore the integration of several generative-AI tools and applications in computer science education. Activities include lesson design, code development, test design and assessment. We address the students' and the educators' perspectives. In addition, we explore computer science practices and soft skills to be applied with these tools as well as immediate and future applications and implications for computer science education and for the society. AT the end of the workshop, the participants will be able to use these generative AI tools in their daily educational computer science activities and beyond.

This study contributes to the growing body of science communication research showing gaps between theory and practice objectives, focusing on one particular understudied and emerging science communication innovation.The objectives and practices of four Israeli science news websites were analyzed considering three science communication models: “Dissemination”, “Dialogue”, and “Participation.” Using concurrent parallel mixed methods, we examined the perspectives of website administrators (n=8) and readers (n=20) through interviews, a content analysis of news items (n=298), discussion threads (n=507), and reader questionnaires (n=89). Findings indicate limited adoption of two-way communication about how science is applied in society. The scant implementation of the dialogue model suggests its promises are not concretized in practice on these science news websites.

This study examines how the introductory engineering course can engage students in learning Industry 4.0 concepts and enhance their digital technology skills through simulation-based design activities. The students used cloud-based design and simulation tools to resolve a system operation problem. They examined the motion of a digital model of a satellite under micro-gravity conditions and detected its instability (Dzhanibekov effect). Then, they redesigned the model and verified its motion stability through simulation. The experimental setup combined the cloud-based CAD platform Onshape and the simulation software Blender. The students’ performances, understanding, and perceptions were evaluated using conventional research tools and the data analytics tools of Onshape. Findings showed that the students successfully performed the workshop assignment, correctly answered the questions about the factors that cause motion instability and appreciated the contribution of the workshop. The study demonstrated the potential of online simulation-based design practices for educating novice engineering students.

Using teaching representations is one of the common means for preparing pre-service mathematics teachers (PSTs) to learn how to teach mathematics meaningfully. However, turning PSTs’ attention to the mathematical objects that students engage with during the lesson is a challenging pursuit. This paper suggests using the Realization Tree Mediator (RTM) as a visual teaching representation for PST learning to implement cognitively demanding tasks in their classrooms. The RTM depicts the mathematical object at the core of a task and its different realizations while illustrating imaginary classroom discussions in which different realizations and the links between them are produced. By analyzing PSTs’ conversations around RTM images, we show how contrasting pairs of RTMs can be used for eliciting conversations about various aspects of cognitively demanding instruction. We discuss the affordances of the RTM as a teaching representation and how it can assist in making the mathematical content and meanings visible, public, and communicable among teachers and teacher educators.

A recent wave of studies has diversified science communication by emphasizing gender, race, and disability. In this article, we focus on the understudied lens of religion. Based on an analysis of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) science journalism and its readership, we identify four main strategies for tailoring science, which we call the four “R”s—removing, reclaiming, remodeling, and rubricating science. By analyzing how science communication is produced by and for a particular religious group, we reveal the diverse ways a religious-sensitive science communication is shaped by community gatekeepers, while also exploring the ethical and epistemological tensions this tailoring entails.