Phyllis Blumenfeld

• University of Michigan

Describes project-based learning as a comprehensive approach to classroom teaching and learning that is designed to engage students in investigation of authentic problems. Students are responsible for both the questions and the answers to such problems. Some of the advantages of project-based learning are that it promotes links among different disc...

This article describes work by a research group bringing a middle-school inquiry and technology science innovation to scale in a systemic urban school reform setting. We distinguish between scaling and scaling within systemic reform. We pose a framework for use by developers of instructional interventions to gauge their "fit" with existing school c...

Considerable effort has been made over the past decade to address the needs of learners in large urban districts through scaleable reform initiatives. We examine the effects of a multifaceted scaling reform that focuses on supporting standards based science teaching in urban middle schools. The effort was one component of a systemic reform effort i...

We examined the development of children's self- and task perceptions during the elementary school years. 865 first-, second-, and fourth-grade children (ages 7–10) completed questionnaires assessing their perceptions of competence in, and valuing of, activities in several activity domains (math, reading, sports, and instrumental music). Factor anal...

Interest in the development and study of learning environments has increased as theory considers how contexts influence individual learning. Descriptions of school-based environments illustrate the range, similarities, and differences in emphases and instantiation of features, as well as their interdependence based on a scheme for characterizing le...

What teaching practices foster inquiry and promote students to learn challenging subject matter in urban schools? Inquiry-based instruction and successful inquiry learning and teaching in project-based science (PBS) were described in previous studies (Brown & Campione, 1990 ; Crawford, 1999 ; Krajcik, Blumenfeld, Marx, Bass, & Fredricks, 1998 ; Kra...

In this chapter we briefly review the literature on motivation and cognitive engagement, and discuss how the key features of learning sciences-based environments are likely to influence them. We indicate some challenges posed by each of these features, for students and for teachers, which may have negative effects on motivation. We describe strateg...

To promote large-scale science education reform, developers must create innovations that teachers can use to learn and enact new practices. As part of an urban systemic reform effort, science materials were designed to reflect desired reforms and to support teacher thinking by addressing necessary content, pedagogy, and pedagogical content knowledg...

The observation that too many students are disengaged from school has inspired interest in the concept of school engagement. However, the growing excitement about school engagement is tempered by numerous conceptual and measurement issues. In this chapter, I briefly reviewed the history of the study of school engagement, summarized some prominent t...

To meet the recent demand for reform in science education (NRC, 1996; AAAS, 1993), the Center for Highly Interactive Classrooms, Curricula, Computing in Education (hi-ce) at the University of Michigan has created inquiry-based, technology-infused curriculum at the middle-school level designed to help teachers engage in best practices in science tea...

Science education standards established by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Research Council (NRC) urge less emphasis on memorizing scientific facts and more emphasis on students investigating the everyday world and developing deep understanding from their inquiries. These approaches to instruction challen...

Considerable effort has been made over the past decade to address the needs of learners in large urban districts through scaleable reform initiatives. We examine the effects of a multifaceted scaling reform which focuses on supporting standards based science teaching in urban middle schools. The effort was one component of systemic reform efforts i...

For research on teaching to succeed in providing meaningful information, a method to examine teaching in complex classroom settings that is also feasible on a larger scale is needed. Our goal was to design a systematic method for observing classroom teaching that was consistent with reform recommendations and adaptable to large scale use. Our work...

This article examines why cognitively oriented technology innovations, designed to foster deep thinking and learning, have not become widespread in K−12 schools. We argue a key reason is that most design-based research does not explicitly address systemic issues of usability, scalability and sustainability. This limitation must be overcome if resea...

This purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which three prospective teachers who had early opportunities to teach science would approach representing science content within the context of their student teaching experiences. The study is framed in the literature on pedagogical content knowledge and learning to teach. A situated perspective...

Like its predecessors - the pencil, paper, and calculator - computers must be within arm's reach, mobile, and palm-accessible in order to make a difference in the classroom.

The past decade has seen great strides in the design of new learning technologies that support learning aligned with standards-based constructivist and inquiry teaching practices. Though there is considerable evidence that these technologies can help students learn when used appropriately, they are rarely employed beyond the small-scale settings in...

Changes in students' achievement values in mathematics and reading were examined in a sample of children and early adolescents. Hierarchical linear modeling techniques were used to account for both classroom- and student-level effects. At the student level, positive changes in students' achievement values were associated positively with self-concep...

The authors assessed age and gender variations in children's beliefs regarding the kinds of activities (academics, sports, music and arts) at which they thought they were best and worst. Children also reported the extent to which they thought they could improve their abilities in these different activities. The authors interviewed 865 first-, secon...

This study examined changes in the science content representations of two prospective elementary teachers during their first year in an experimental teacher preparation program. Qualitative case study design guided data collection, organization, and analysis. Multiple forms of data, including audiotaped interviews, written documents, and videotaped...

rk over a period of time. Describing problems students encounter as they engage in inquiry and finding ways to ameliorate those problems has received considerable attention recently (Hmelo & Williams, [Special Issue, JLS], 1998; McGilly, 1994, Blumenfeld et al, 1998). In this paper, we describe inquiry in more detail, discuss ways to aid students v...

The article focuses on the role of Internet in learning The article focuses on the role of Internet in learning. Learning is promoted when information resources and discourse around artifacts and ideas are readily and routinely available to teachers and students. While there is considerable debate over the value of Internet in the U.S. elementary e...

Although inquiry is an essential component of science learning, we know little about students' experience with inquiry in regular science classrooms. Our goal is to describe realistically what middle school students do and where they have difficulties in their first encounters with inquiry learning. We report findings from case studies of 8 student...

This article describes the potential of new technologies for teacher professional development. The article examines literature on teacher knowledge and professional development and discusses how this literature can inform the design of three types of technology to support teacher learning: multimedia, productivity tools, and telecommunication infor...

We describe an introductory course that uses instructional planning as a central organizer for educational psychology concepts. In the article, we present the rationale for the approach, discuss its compatibility with calls for reform in educational psychology teaching, detail how the course operates, indicate challenges for instructors, and summar...

Inquiry is an essential component of science learning (Lunetta, in press; Roth, 1995). New constructivist and social constructivist approaches to science instruction feature inquiry as essential for student learning. These approaches assume that students need opportunities to find solutions to real questions by asking and refining questions, design...

The Educational Psychology Division (Division 15) of the American Psychological Association created a committee to examine the: teaching of educational psychology in the broader context of teacher education reform. The committee recommends that educational psychologists who participate in teacher education should help prospective teachers develop c...

We describe our collaborative work on project-based instruction with middle school teachers. Grounded in constructivist theory, project-based instruction affords many possibilities for transforming classrooms into active learning environments. To make the theory concrete and accessible to teachers, we delineate features. Students' investigations ar...

We draw conclusions regarding how 5 teachers learned to enact an instructional program based on constructivist theory in their classrooms, project-based science. We describe how the teacher-researcher collaborative activities unfolded, based on a model of teacher change that focused on cycles of collaboration, enactment, and reflection and how thes...

The case studies in this article demonstrate how 4 middle grade teachers addressed the challenges and dilemmas of enacting project-based science in their classrooms. The teachers attempted to enact several common features of project-based science, including student collaboration and ownership and the use of technology. The 4 teachers faced dilemmas...

When designing units for instruction teachers must integrate information from several types of knowledge bases, for instance, information about subject specific pedagogy (pedagogical content knowledge), general pedagogy, the subject-matter (content knowledge), and learners (including their developmental level and prior knowledge). We at the Univers...

A dissertation proposal is made to study the development of materialistic values during the years of middle childhood and to determine whether the pattern of development is different for children of various ages, sexes and socioeconomic backgrounds. The development of materialistic values will be studied in regard to the beliefs of children during...

INTRODUCTION There is mounting evidence that the use of computing technologies can lead to learning gains in K-12 (e.g., Honey et al., 1999; Krajcik & Starr, 2001; Krajcik et al., 2000; Schneider et al., 2001). However, to realize those gains, interacting "enabling conditions" need to simultaneously exist in the school and classroom, i.e., • Studen...