Concepts can be examined in two groups as abstract and concrete ones. While concrete concepts are improved as a result of students' experiences, it is considerably challenging for students to perceive abstract concepts. Since chemistry includes abstract concepts largely, it is considered to be hard to comprehend as a class by students. In fact,…

There is an increasingly rich body of developmental research on children's understanding of science and religion as ways of knowing. In this manuscript, I put this scholarship in conversation with applied research on science education and consider the potential implications for exposing children to instruction that addresses the relationship…

According to constructivist theory, learning is a construction of new knowledge based on prior knowledge. As a consequence, science teachers are encouraged to take students' prior knowledge into account. It is evident in many cases that although students' prior knowledge is often not consistent with scientific knowledge, they may have some…

Knowing what students bring to the classroom can and should influence how we teach them. This study is a review of the literature associated with secondary and postsecondary students' ideas about acids and bases. It was found that there are six types of alternate ideas about acids and bases that students hold. These are: macroscopic properties of…

This paper provides a systematic review of instruments that have the potential to measure the quality of project-based science and technology (S&T) learning environments in elementary school. To this end, a comprehensive literature search was undertaken for the large field of S&T learning environments. We conducted a horizontal bottom-up…

The move from learning science from representations to learning science with representations has many potential and undocumented complexities. This thematic analysis partially explores the trends of representational uses in science instruction, examining 80 research studies on diagram use in science. These studies, published during 2000-2014, were…

Examines how children's misconceptions regarding scientific phenomena change over time through instruction and other mechanisms. Asserts that Piagetian and Vygotskian theories offer insights into children's misconceptions related to how they are formed and how they are influenced by personal experience and social factors, and that these theories…

Reviews selected research on children's early formation of categories. Finds sophistication in how children group objects and think about those groupings. Notes findings related to type of grouping (thematic or taxonomic), multiple classifications, overgeneralization, the role of background knowledge on classification abilities, the…