Proposing scientific descriptions is critical for individuals to cope with daily problems and acquire essential information. Nonetheless, few classes have enhanced students' ability to describe facts of scientific phenomena. Thus, using a tool of technology-based laboratory, this research examined whether students' scientific descriptions and…

The use of scientific models has been regarded as an important skill for scientific enquiry. However, although many national curricula and major international science education reform movements have stressed the use of scientific models in science teaching and learning, students and teachers generally do not know how to perceive models properly.…

Cross-grade studies are valuable for the development of sequential curriculum. However such studies are time and resource intensive and fail to provide a clear representation to integrate different levels of representational complexity. Lin (Lin, 2006; Lin & Chiu, 2006; Lin, Chiu, & Hsu, 2006) proposed a cladistics approach in conceptual…

Generally, in the foundation course of architectural design, much emphasis is placed on teaching of the basic design skills without focusing on teaching students to apply the basic design concepts in their architectural designs or promoting students' own creativity. Therefore, this study aims to propose a concept transformation learning model to…

Mental models play an important role in science education research. To extend the effectiveness of conceptual change research and to improve mental model identi?cation and diagnosis, the authors developed and tested the Web-Based Mental Models Diagnosis (WMMD) system. In this article, they describe their WMMD system, which goes beyond the…

Computer-based learning tools include design features to enhance learning but learners may not always perceive the existence of these features and use them in desirable ways. There might be a gap between what the tool features are designed to offer (intended affordance) and what they are actually used (actual affordance). This study thus aims at…

Concept comprehension is an important foundation for more complex thoughts. To enhance concept comprehension, teachers of traditional classrooms have been using instructional strategies and specific course designs, which have been proven effective. It initiates a hypothesis that integrating instructional strategies in the course designs of an…

"Building information technology" and "cost estimating" are two core skills of construction education. However, in traditional education, students learn these two important subjects in separate courses. This study proposes a blended learning environment which can provide students with support for their face-to-face learning…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the type of exploratory strategy and level of prior knowledge on middle school students' performance and motivation in learning chemical formulas via a 3D role-playing game (RPG). Two types of exploratory strategies-RPG exploratory with worked-example and RPG exploratory without…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how learning materials based on Science Magic activities affect student attitudes to science. A quasi-experimental design was conducted to explore the combination of Science Magic with the 5E Instructional Model to develop learning materials for teaching a science unit about friction. The participants…

Prior knowledge is a very important part of teaching and learning, as it affects how instructors and students interact with the learning materials. In general, tests are used to assess students' prior knowledge. Nevertheless, conventional testing approaches usually assign only an overall score to each student, and this may mean that students are…

This study was part of a 6-year integrated project designed to build a databank of students' science conceptions in Taiwan. The main purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of students' mental models regarding acids/bases, understand their changes in mental models, and explore sources that might influence students in constructing…

To explore the ways in which teacher-guided and student-centered instructional approaches influence students' conceptual understanding of seasonal change, we designed a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) course to compare, by means of concept maps, the learning outcome of students in two groups: a teacher-guided (TG) class (with whole-class…

The paper reports a cross-cultural investigation conducted in 2001-2002 that seeks to reveal students' alternative ideas in two countries, Taiwan and Germany. It was carried out by means of semi-structured interviews in a story form. The targeted students were arbitrarily selected from grades 3 to 6 in both countries and amounted to 64. The…

The development of an instructional model based on a learning cycle including correlation, analysis, and generalization (CAG) is described. A module developed for heat and temperature was administered to test its effects by comparing its use with the same unit in the New Physical Science Curriculum (NPSC). The methodology, results, and discussion…