Describes the use of analogies to explain scientific concepts. Presents the teaching-with-analogies model. (JRH)

Presents an integrated approach that helps students understand difficult science concepts. Involves counteracting children's confusion over certain concepts, confronting children's misconceptions through inquiry, and presenting a multitude of experiences that challenge children's erroneous beliefs. Presents an example of applying this approach to…

Summarizes research on inquiry and investigative strategies for teaching laboratory science. Concludes that meaningful laboratory instruction is distinguished by: student engagement in science inquiry processes, student manipulation of experimental materials, and the experiential teaching of specific scientific concepts. (RT)

Outlines a module developed with the aim of teaching a group of secondary science students several learning strategies which could be transferred into classroom learning. Students demonstrate that knowledge about "elaboration" and the linking of new learning to previous knowledge enhances learning and understanding of scientific concepts.…

Discusses the epistemology and typical applications of learning models focusing on practical methods to operationally introduce the distinctive, alloseric models into the educational environment. Alloseric learning models strive to minimize the characteristic resistance that learners typically exhibit when confronted with the need to reorganize or…

Discusses some scaffolds or prompts for helping students to ask themselves better questions about science topics. Presents some teacher questions that test and develop some core thinking skills. (PR)

Describes how discrepant events can be employed as a viable teaching strategy. Reviews the theory of cognitive dissonance and provides examples and approaches in its resolution. Offers samples of discrepancy events and unexpected situations. (ML)

Discusses the commonly held misconceptions on heat and examines potential contributing factors. Defines and provides examples of internal energy and heat. Suggests approaches to the teaching of heat for secondary level students. (ML)

Explains a formal scheme for analyzing biological communications for implicit structural themes using principles of kinetic structural analysis. Presents study findings which focused on the role of sequential communication structures for enhancing reception learning of knowledge and conceptual schemes. (ML)

In this study 34 spontaneous analogies produced by 16 college freshmen while solving qualitative physics problems are analyzed. A number of the analogies were invalid in the sense that they led to an incorrect answer from the physicist's point of view. However, many were valid, and a few were powerful in the sense that they seemed not only to help…

This paper, designed to be used in conjunction with a video-tape developed by the Learning in Science Project (Primary)--LISP(P)--shows excerpts from some of the interview schedules used to examine children's ideas about floating and sinking. These interviews involved the use of "interview-about-instances" (IAI) cards (included in an…

This study investigated the meanings and ideas held and questions asked by children (ages 7-14) about floating and sinking (in water). Data were collected from interviews using "interview-about-instances" (IAI) cards (included in an appendix) and 10 objects which either floated or sank. Additional data were collected from classroom…

Discussed is the philosophy of the educational purpose of science education, the science involved, and the relationships of students and learning and students and content. A list of 14 references is included. (CW)

Discussed is a method to teach undergraduate students how to complete a conceptual design. Presents three tools to use: (1) how to use order-of-magnitude arguments to simplify problems, (2) how to derive design heuristics, and (3) how to decompose large problems into a set of small, simple problems. (Author/MVL)

Reports on the assessment of student thinking in the area of commitment to the laws of conservation of matter and energy during a study of conceptual change among introductory chemistry students. States four conditions upon which strategies for conceptual change are based. (RT)