This is a theoretical paper in which we describe the motivation for and the design of a novel primary physics course for student teachers at kindergarten and primary school levels that uses cognitive tools such as metaphor, analogy, and narrative. The course has been taught in the master's program in teacher education at three Universities over…

University and high school students not pursuing a science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) course of study demonstrate less developed scientific reasoning than their STEM-based peers. Previous studies show that the majority of non-STEM students can be classified as either concrete operational or transitional reasoners in…

Young children's naive beliefs about physics are commonly studied as isolated pieces of knowledge. The current paper takes a different approach. It asks whether preschoolers interlink individual beliefs into larger configurations or Gestalts. Such Gestalts bring together knowledge such as how an object's mass relates to its sinking speed, how an…

Offers a theory of how commonsense reasoning about motion may develop. Takes as fundamental the basic categories: action, object, space, cause, time, and movement. Suggests that very primitive elements could combine to provide schemes of motion recognizable in psychological accounts of infancy and generate prototypes of and rules for motion. (DK)

During the past 15 years, physics education research has revealed many surprising things about the difficulties introductory physics students have in learning physics. At the same time, the ongoing revolution in information technology has led to new tools for creating innovative educational environments. In response to these two developments, a…

Physics learning involves a change in the habitual perception of the everyday world. In order to describe the real world scientifically, an individual must develop perception and cognition capable of reconstructing the world from raw sensory data and incorporating acquired knowledge of the scientific community. The introductory physics student…

This paper posits a cognitive model for understanding and learning physics that is an alternative to the formal deductive system. Recent findings of Fuller, Karplus, Lawson, and others are cited in arguing against using a formal deductive approach to teaching physics. The model demonstrates types of action-oriented knowledge structures as they…

The purpose of this report is to examine how well students in Massachusetts are meeting the Goals of Education, as measured by the Massachusetts Education Assessment Program (MEAP). The first section of this report defines various levels of proficiency and then compares different groups within the student population in terms of the percentages…

Review of models traditionally used by different disciplines to describe thinking processes led to development of a general model and testing in six pure and applied matched disciplines (physics, engineering, psychology, education, English literature, composition). Professors applied the models to their courses in different ways and used various…