Effectiveness of KLEWS on high school freshman engagement and performance during biology discussions

Abstract

The implementation of this action research was at Bradford Area School District (BASD) in Bradford, Pennsylvania. KLEWS were used at Bradford Area High School (BAHS) with freshman Biology students. KLEWS is an acronym that stands for "Know," "Learning," "Evidence," "Wonderings," and "Scientific Principles.". This is an example of a CER "Claims, Evidence, Reasoning" framework of teaching that has been shown to aid in learning progression by utilizing a scaffolding approach to teaching (Yao & Guo, 2016). CER was a framework developed to model scientific explanation and justify claims by using appropriate evidence and scientific research (Yao & Guo, 2016). There were five data collection methods used for this action research: discussion engagement charts, pre-treatment Likert surveys, post-treatment Likert surveys, unit exam, and student interviews. The duration of this action research was eight weeks and involved 57 freshman biology students. At the end of the eight weeks, two sections of biology students took a unit exam, and the results were analyzed using a standardized t-test.