Understanding simple electric DC circuits often represents a great challenge to many students in lower secondary schools. As a result, students' knowledge of this subject is often dominated by alternative conceptions, even after instruction. One of the reasons for these learning difficulties is the intangibility of key physical quantities and…

In this paper we illustrate the architecture of the °'°Kobi system, which is aimed at supporting students' education in artistic or design activities. We will outline the scientific and methodological foundations of the educational approach aimed at enhancing the artistic conception and the design ideation. The functional requirements and the…

This article presents a method for using mind mapping to assess social learning outcomes in collaborative environmental restoration and participatory natural resource management initiatives. Using mind mapping for preassessment and postassessment can reveal changes in individual and collective thinking about critical social and ecological issues.…

The embodied cognition approach to the study of the mind proposes that higher order mental processes such as concept formation and language are essentially based on perceptual and motor processes. Contrary to the classical approach in cognitive science, in which concepts are viewed as amodal, arbitrary symbols, embodied semantics argues that…

Despite considerable research on organizational commitment, a clear understanding of the process through which commitment develops has remained elusive. While there has been discussion in the literature about the possible relationship between organizational learning and organizational commitment, this paper develops a theoretical framework to…

The purpose of this article is to map the context within which learning could occur, that is, the organizational learning processes and structures that can create or improve learning in a learning organization. Such an approach produces definition for learning organization and integrates the basis concepts into a model of organizational learning…

We describe a longitudinal study of a secondary education biology teacher at two moments in her career (1993-2002), determining the changes in her conceptions of the nature of science and its teaching and learning, and the factors that favored or hindered such changes. The changes were analyzed using cognitive maps, constructed on the basis of the…

If people believe that some property is true of all members of a class such as sofas, then they should also believe that the same property is true of all members of a conjunctively defined subset of that class such as uncomfortable handmade sofas. A series of experiments demonstrated a failure to observe this constraint, leading to what is termed…

This document illustrates that mental functioning and communication in Catalan Sign Language (LSC) are conceptual through metaphorical projection of bodily experiences. The data in this document show how concepts are grasped, put on student's heads, exchanged, manipulated, and so on, constituting instantiations of the basic metaphors: ideas are…

Cognitive development is driven by experience, but is mediated by domain general processes, which include learning, induction, and analogy. The concepts children understand, and the strategies they develop based on that understanding, depend on the complexity of the representation they can construct. Conceptual complexity can be defined in terms…

Doubt has been increasingly perceived as a means of introducing education renewal, particularly within the context of dramatic social change and uncertainty. Nevertheless, little inquiry has been conducted with regard to the doubting process and the principal's role that influences its effectiveness. This lack of conceptualization is particularly…

Discusses the problem of establishing terminology for mental models, attempts to sort out the various meanings found in the literature, and offers definitions that could help in developing a more standardized terminology for discussing issues of concern to researchers in human-computer interaction. The role of mental models in learning and using…

The proclamation of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development by the United Nations has placed education in general, and environmental education in particular, at the front of a future full of important and uncertain meanings. On the one hand, those inviting a conceptual, theoretical and praxiological revision of the…

Presents the results of an experiment that evaluated the efficiency of analogy in the conceptual restructuring of a science topic. The experiment involved a fifth-grade class studying water and heat flow. Discovered that analogy can act as an effective trigger for restructuring knowledge. (MJP)

Reviews the current literature concerning prior knowledge in an attempt to clarify problems with the terminology. Identifies the three main problems: lack of definition or vagueness, nominal versus real definitions, and different names/same constructs or same name/different constructs. Includes a conceptual map of prior knowledge terminology. (MJP)