The museum visit is an important part of elementary school science teaching. However, a divide exists between teachers, who require curricular accountability, and museums, who emphasize free-choice exploration. Can a carefully constructed worksheet bridge this divide by providing free-choice exploration of curricular topics during the museum…

This study aimed to investigate the comparative value of experimenting with physical manipulatives (PM) in a sequential combination with virtual manipulatives (VM), with the use of PM preceding the use of VM, and of experimenting with PM alone, with respect to changes in students' conceptual understanding in the domain of heat and temperature. A…

Our research project was guided by the assumption that students who learn to understand phenomena in everyday terms prior to being taught scientific language will develop improved understanding of new concepts. We used web-based software to teach students using a "content-first" approach that allowed students to transition from…

This study focuses on the ability of high-school chemistry students, who learn chemistry through the inquiry approach, to ask meaningful and scientifically sound questions. We investigated (a) the ability of students to ask questions related to their observations and findings in an inquiry-type experiment (a practical test) and (b) the ability of…

Bearing in mind students' misconceptions about basic concepts in astronomy, the present study conducted a series of constructivist activities aimed at changing future elementary and junior high school teachers' conceptions about the cause of seasonal changes, and several characteristics of the Sun-Earth-Moon relative movements like Moon phases,…