A Co-word Analysis of Selected Science Education Literature: Identifying Research Trends of Scaffolding in Two Decades (2000-2019).

This study aims to identify research trends of scaffolding in the field of science education. To this end, both descriptive analysis and co-word analysis were conducted to examine the selected articles published in the Social Science Citation Index journals from 2000 to 2019. A total of 637 papers were retrieved as research samples through rounds of searching in Web of Science database. Overall, this study reveals a growing trend of science educators' academic publications about scaffolding in the recent two decades. In these sample papers, from 1,487 non-repeated keywords, we extracted 286 author-defined keywords shared by at least two studies as a benchmark dictionary. A series of co-word analyses were then conducted based on the dictionary to reveal the underlying co-occurring relationships of the words in title and abstract of the sample papers. Results showed that "scaffolding," "support," and "design" were the top three most frequently used keywords during 2000 and 2019. Visualization of co-word networks in each 5-year period further helps clarify both educators' common research foci and relevant research trends. Derived discussion and potential research directions are also provided.

Impact of augmented reality lessons on students' STEM interest.

In this paper, we explore the possibility of embedding augmented reality (AR) in authentic inquiry activities to contextualize students' exploration of medical surgery, and investigate students' perceptions of the AR lessons and simulators, and their Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) interest. Thirty-two senior high school students participated in the two AR lessons related to medical surgery, "laparoscopic surgery" and "cardiac catheterization." The results showed that the students had positive perceptions of the AR lessons and simulators (overall mean = 4.1) after completing the two lessons. However, the authenticity of the simulators was perceived as the lowest ranking. In contrast, both the motivation and engagement triggered by the AR lessons were high, with most of the mean scores reaching 4.3. The AR lessons did evoke some students' STEM interest as the survey results indicated that 12 students considered an STEM major in university. This study provides a possible solution for the alignment of instructional approaches (authentic inquiry), technology design (AR), and learning experience in developing STEM lessons.