This document presents a two-part study. In the first part, open-ended questions based on interview studies were administered via paper-and-pencil tasks to 76 sixth and eighth grade students. In the second part, the earth and sun relationship questions were extracted, modified, and given to 178 seventh grade students. In part one, the performance…

The Connecticut Assessment of Educational Progress (CAEP) is modeled after the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and has been in operation since 1971. This report is the culmination of a multi-year effort by the Connecticut State Department of Education to make its CAEP program even more useful to classroom teachers and other…

The concept of the density of a material has an important role in elementary and secondary school science curricula, but it is a difficult concept to grasp. This project explores why this should be and whether there are some simpler, more accessible notions which can serve as the basis for building a concept of density in students' minds during…