Innovation in Teaching Science and Student Learning Analytics

Dear Colleagues, 

Innovation in teaching has been a critical issue in Educational Research for many years. From the acknowledgement—dating to the year 1950—that learning can be greatly innovated and improved by taking into account the relevance of understanding the learners’ mental processes, conceptual change, common-sense ideas, etc., the idea of proposing innovation in teaching, and testing its efficacy, has gained an increasing amount of support in the research community. 

Many proposals of innovation in education have been made in recent years, mainly involving methodologies and teaching techniques that may be able to improve learning, while also taking into account the idea of sustainability in education. Below are some important examples:

• The support for the proper use of modern technologies (real-time laboratory, computer-assisted modelling environments, use of sensors in smartphones, etc.) in education, which can maintain the interest of students and favour conceptual understanding.
• The need to actively involve learners in their learning processes to promote the effective, authentic and durable acquisition of concepts and skills that the learner can actually use in real life. The idea of active learning, initially proposed by Reginald W. Revans in 1982, is today widely adopted by many educational communities and has been implemented in different disciplinary fields as specific teaching/learning approaches and methodologies. Some examples are the learning approaches known as “collaborative/cooperative learning”, “problem/project-based learning”, “flipped classroom”, and “inquiry-based science education”.
• The idea of Responsible Research and Innovation (e.g., von Schomberg, 2013), an approach to teaching and learning that involves students in specific themes, making them aware of potential implications and societal expectations with regard to innovation, with the aim to foster the design of inclusive and sustainable learning related to research.

Many research studies generally focus on the issues and implications related to the adoption of innovation in education (e.g., Hariri and Roberts, 2015; Zhu and Engels, 2014), and on the identification of the implications of innovation in terms of teaching and proper technology use (e.g., Marzilli et al, 2014;  Smith, 2012; Parker, et al., 2008; Ajayi, 2009). However, much is also to be said about the processes that can help improve learning outcomes related to innovation in teaching. Therefore, a proper discussion about innovation in teaching must be paired with a focus on student learning analytics, with the aim to provide information that can define the effectiveness of innovation, and ultimately improve teaching and learning outcomes.

In this issue, both the aspects of innovation in teaching and student learning analytics, with reference to how data about learners and their environments are collected and analysed for the purpose of understanding students’ learning and how they learn from proposed innovation in teaching, will be explored and discussed, with particular attention to STEM disciplines.

Prof. Dr. Claudio Fazio
Dr. Onofrio Rosario Battaglia
Prof. Dr. Eilish McLoughlin
Prof. Dr. Italo Testa
Guest Editors

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• innovation in teaching
• active learning
• teaching and learning science
• student learning analytics
• quantitative methods
• qualitative methods