Adam Maltese

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Museums offer a unique role and safe space in shaping how youth view and react to experiences with failure. The purpose of this study was to add to the conversation around failure in out‐of‐school learning, particularly from the perspective of educators within museum settings that implement STEAM‐related making exhibits, workshops, and/or camps for...

The Chinese education system issued a series of policies to encourage educators to explore science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and selected a number of schools and educators as pioneers of STEM education. Through the education policy implementation framework, this qualitative study explores eight pioneering educators’...

Background In this paper, we add to the scant literature base on learning from failures with a particular focus on understanding educators' shifting mindset in making‐centred learning environments. Aims The aim of Study 1 was to explore educators' beliefs about failure for learning and instructional practices within their local making‐centred lear...

Indian children experienced large-scale disruption in educational, psychological, and social welfare access when schools abruptly closed due to COVID-19. In addition to education, the Indian public school system provides services such as meals and benefits related to improving gender parity and indirectly preventing child labor, child marriages, an...

In this manuscript, we describe a coding club we created and implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were purposeful in creating the club to: (a) focus on design and problem solving as the basis for learning computer coding and (b) include elements to improve the engagement of girls. We ran multiple iterations of a Girls Design with Code Club...

In this chapter, we take a critical look at play research, looking beyond developmentalist assumptions that very young children’s activity is individual, imitative, and partial. Sociomaterial theory shifts the focus from individual behaviors to actions co-produced in child-toy-text assemblages, that is, the intra-actions among children and toys as...

Background Despite the prevalence and potential of K–12 engineering outreach programs, the moment‐to‐moment dynamics of outreach educators' facilitation of engineering learning experiences are understudied. There is a need to identify outreach educators' teaching moves and to explore the implications of these moves. Purpose/Hypothesis We offer a p...

We examined transitions in secondary math pre-service teachers (PSTs)' professional identities as they engaged in online practice-based, virtual simulations designed to support the development of their skills to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions. Using a single item measure, we captured a snapshot of the PSTs' identity at two time points...

Eliciting and interpreting students’ ideas are essential skills in teaching, yet pre-service teachers (PSTs) rarely have adequate opportunities to develop these skills. In this study, we examine PSTs’ patterns of discourse and perceived learning through engaging in an interactive digital simulation called Eliciting Learner Knowledge (ELK). ELK is a...

Creativity is of increasing importance to the field of engineering. Thus, furthering our understanding of the development of (or barriers to) creativity during childhood and adolescence, and in environments alternative to traditional classroom settings, may hold particular significance and implications for generating creative and cognitive shifts a...

The broad fields of engineering design and entrepreneurship education have, in recent years, combined in novel ways to create interdisciplinary, real-world curricular experiences in higher education and K-12. Depending on the elements included from engineering design and entrepreneurship methodologies, some curricula espouse a more inventive focus,...

Background Capturing measures of students’ attitudes toward science has long been a focus within the field of science education. The resulting interest has led to the development of many instruments over the years. There is considerable disagreement about how attitudes should be measured, and especially whether students’ attitudes toward science ca...

Research studies support caregivers' involvement in children's mathematical journeys, as foundational to their cognitive development and academic success as mathematical learners. The purpose of this intrinsic case study was to understand how a caregiver initiated and/or continually engaged their child in spontaneous mathematical moments during a f...

STEM education programs are often formulated with a "hands-on activities" focus across a wide array of topics from robotics to rockets to ecology. Traditionally, the impact of these programs is based on surveys of youth on program-specific experiences or the youths’ interest and impressions of science in general. In this manuscript, we offer a new...

Purpose This study aims to understand how graduate students in a maker education course discuss beliefs about making and implement these beliefs as pedagogy in their curricular designs. Design/methodology/approach Interview transcripts from seven students were analyzed thematically for conceptions of making and learning. Lesson plans were also cod...

Using latent class analysis (LCA), we examine the potential ways of classifying students’ science motivation in the United States and China using data from PISA 2015. Based on a set of nine observed variables of science motivation, we identify three subgroups of cases varied in their internal patterns of motivation, covering, respectively, 24.78%,...

Background Despite the increasing number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs available, concern continues to grow over the low number of students who choose to study and enter STEM fields. Research suggests that children begin to identify their interests and career aspirations related to STEM as early as elementary scho...

Professional identity, for many, is a substantial component of their career choices and development. In this study, we utilized data from an online survey completed by 1,867 participants living across the United States to consider the extent to which an individual working in science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) field identifi...

Terms such as failure, mistakes, errors, obstacles, and struggle are used interchangeably, but each carries different connotations and discipline-specific meanings. Reactions to experiencing a failure can range as well from being seen as having educative value to be debilitating. These reactions are based on criteria like environment, prior experie...

Making and tinkering is currently gaining traction as an interdisciplinary approach to education. However, little is known about how these activities and explorations in formal and informal learning spaces address the content and skills common to professionals across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. As such, the purpose of this qu...

Undergraduate research experiences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are championed for promoting students' personal and professional development. Mentorship is an integral part of undergraduate research, as effective mentorship maximizes the benefits undergraduates realize from participating in research. Yet almost no res...

A lot of attention has been given to the role failure plays in learning and innovation. Yet, we know little about the conditions necessary for the experience to result in positive outcomes. In this study, we sought to answer three research questions: (1) What is the relationship among attend, interpret, and respond when experiencing failures within...

Given the centrality of data visualizations in communicating scientific information, increased emphasis has been placed on the development of students' graph literacy-the ability to generate and interpret data representations-to foster understanding of domain-specific knowledge and the successful navigation of everyday life. Despite prior literatur...

Providing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) experiences to middle and high school students outside of traditional classroom settings is critical in preparing learners to be literate in these fields. At the same time, providing graduate students in science and mathematics with independent pedagogical opportunities that prepare...

Inspired by the current embodiment turn in the cognitive sciences, researchers of STEM teaching and learning have been evaluating implications of this turn for educational theory and practice. But whereas design researchers have been developing domain-specific theories that implicate the role of physical movement in conceptual learning, the field h...

Misconceptions are the “the old, the bad, and the ugly” prior knowledge, ideas or conceptions that the learners have that hinder their further learning in science. Several types of misconceptions that undergraduate students hold about reaction coordinate diagrams (from here on we use the term “reaction coordinate diagrams” and “energy diagrams” int...

Making is a recent educational phenomenon that is increasingly occurring in schools and informal learning spaces around the world. In this paper we explore data from maker educators about their experiences with failure. We surveyed maker educators about how they view failure happening with youth in their formal and informal programs and how they re...

Network visualizations, a particular kind of data visualization, can be a useful way to visually represent the relationships in real or theoretical social, physical or biological systems. Network data can be generated and analyzed without being visualized, but the visualizations are often more compelling and may be more easily understood than numbe...

Network visualizations, a particular kind of data visualization, can be a useful way to visually represent the relationships in real or theoretical social, physical, or biological systems. Network data can be generated and analyzed without being visualized, but the visualizations are often more compelling and may be more easily understood than numb...

Despite many millions of dollars being spent each year to support undergraduate research experiences for students in the sciences, there has been little in the way of solid evaluation of these experiences. Recently, research has surfaced that addresses this issue and provides tools that are useful for researchers and evaluators to assess the gains...

To remedy the disparity between sexes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, it is important to understand the factors critical to initiating and maintaining STEM interest. To this end, we created and administered a survey to almost 8,000 individuals in and outside of STEM fields. Our results shed light on the various f...

There is increasing recognition that gesture plays an important role in cognition and learning, and due to concurrent advances in technology that can build upon these gestures, more and more educational researchers have explored how gestures can and do support learning. While many studies have focused on spontaneous gestures, fewer have examined ho...

The focus of our study was to explore whether tutorials with our embodied learning environment helped elementary students recognize ecosystem dynamics (e.g., feedback loops, instable equilibrium, iterations and delays) in the context of predator-prey relationships. In addition, we wanted to discover whether, after interacting with the embodied lear...

The term failure typically evokes negative connotations in educational settings and is likely to be accompanied by negative emotional states, low sense of confidence, and lack of persistence. These negative emotional and behavioral states may factor into an individual not pursuing a degree or career in science, technology, engineering, or mathemati...

National calls in science, technology, engineering, and technology education reform efforts have advanced the wide-scale engagement of students in undergraduate research for the preparation of a workforce and citizenry able to attend to the challenges of the 21st century. Awareness of the potential benefits and costs of these experiences has led to...

In the information age, a person’s ability to read and make data visualizations is nearly as important as being able to read and write text. This article reports the results of a multi-phase study conducted in informal learning environments in three US science museums. The goal of the study was to determine the familiarity of youth and adult museum...

Engaging students in class is paramount if they are to gain a deep understanding of class content. Student engagement is manifested by attention to the various components of instruction. However, there is little research at the tertiary level focusing on what aspects of instruction are related to changes in student attention during class. To addres...

Understanding how geologists conduct fieldwork through analysis of problem solving has significant potential impact on field instruction methods within geology and other science fields. Recent work has highlighted many aspects of fieldwork, but the problem solving behaviors displayed by geologists during fieldwork and the associated cognitive proce...

We describe a novel approach to examining the relationship between human anatomy instruction and student learning through a collaboration among neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and science educators. The project applies electroencephalograph (EEG) technology, which has been used to study memory encoding effects in a laboratory setting, to a n...

In the information age, a person’s ability to read and make data visualizations is nearly as important as being able to read and write text. This article reports the results of a multi-phase study conducted in informal learning environments in three US science museums. The goal of the study was to determine the familiarity of youth and adult museum...

In the information age, a person’s ability to read and make data visualizations is nearly as important as being able to read and write text. This article reports the results of a multi-phase study conducted in informal learning environments in three US science museums. The goal of the study was to determine the familiarity of youth and adult museum...

Previous research has established the importance of early interest in STEM as a key factor in persistence. Our current research builds on this foundation and extends it to add more detail to understanding the types of experiences that trigger and maintain interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Using survey data from n...

No area of educational provision has a greater current importance than the STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. However, there is surprisingly little comprehensive international information about STEM policy, participation, programs and practice. This book is a state of the art survey of the global trends and major c...

This paper introduces the design and implementation of a comparative survey research project, amistem [Assessing Multinational Interest in stem (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)] in China, the U.S., and Australia that is being conducted by researchers at Indiana University. We begin with an overview of how survey research has deve...

Within the sciences, undergraduate research experiences (UREs) are widely touted as one of the most powerful educational devices to develop student skills in preparation for STEM careers. However, while extant literature has identified a range of participatory benefits associated with UREs, research to date has largely relied on indirect selfreport...

For the past two years, the Foundations in Physics and Mathematics (FPM) summer program has been held at Indiana University in order to fulfill two goals: provide additional physics and mathematics instruction at the high school level, and provide physics graduate students with experience and autonomy in designing curricula and teaching courses. In...

To comprehend and learn from the development, implementation, and accomplishment of educational policies in the United States (US), it is important to understand the structure and dynamics of the educational system. Thus, this report begins with an introduction to this system to provide the reader with sufficient background to make sense of the pol...

The focus of this research was to investigate how students learn to do fieldwork through observation. This study addressed the following questions: (1) Can mobile eye-tracking devices provide a robust source of data to investigate the observations and workflow of novice students while participating in a field exercise? If so, what are the strengths...

The loss of talented women from the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline has been widely recognized within science education as a pressing issue, particularly in the physical sciences. To provide a gender-based perspective of a popular educational device, the present study evaluated undergraduate research experiences (U...

Even with the history of debate over the merits of homework, there are significant gaps in the research record regarding its benefit to students. The focus of this study is on the association between time spent on homework and academic performance in science and math by assessing survey and transcript data from two nationally representative samples...

For more than half a century concerns about the ability of American students to compete in a global workplace focused policymakers' attention on improving school performance generally, and student achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) specifically. In its most recent form—No Child Left Behind—there is evidence this...

This paper presents details about a summer instructional program created by physics graduate students who sought a chance to help students from the local community and to gain greater experience teaching science and math. The students initiated, designed, and conducted the program, which gave the instructors their first chance to independently desi...

As the global economic crisis continues, sustaining the United States' position as a leader in research and development is a top concern of policy makers. Looking to increase the number of students pursuing degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), calls for improved mathematics and science education abound. We completed...