One of the goals of college-level introductory biology is to establish a foundation of knowledge and skills that can be built upon throughout a biology curriculum. In a reformed introductory biology course, we used iterative model construction as a pedagogical tool to promote students' understanding about conceptual connections, particularly those…

The development of the Visual-Perceptual Chemistry Specific (VPCS) assessment tool is based on items that align to eight visual-perceptual skills considered as needed by chemistry students. This tool includes a comprehensive range of visual operations and presents items within a chemistry context without requiring content knowledge to solve…

This study reports an adaptive digital learning project, Scientific Concept Construction and Reconstruction (SCCR), and examines its effects on 108 8th grade students' scientific reasoning and conceptual change through mixed methods. A one-group pre-, post-, and retention quasi-experimental design was used in the study. All students received tests…

This study examines the process by which system thinking perceptions develop within the context of a water cycle curriculum. Four junior high school students undergoing an especially designed inquiry-based intervention were closely observed before, during, immediately after, and 6 years after completing a year long systems-based learning program.…

The aim of this study was to develop a model of students' energy concept development. Applying Case's (1985, 1992) structural theory of cognitive development, we hypothesized that students' concept of energy undergoes a series of transitions, corresponding to systematic increases in working memory capacity. The US national sample from the Third…

Grossberg's principles of neural modeling are reviewed and extended to provide a neural level theory to explain how analogies greatly increase the rate of learning and can make learning and retention possible. (PR)

Two focusing hypotheses were evaluated. First, do adjunct questions, focusing on science concepts and inserted after computer-animated sequences, selectively alter students' attentional processing and thus produce differential learning effects? Second, to these questions still provide enough metacognitive scaffolding to produce differential…

Reports the results of two experiments that examined the relative effects of questions requiring decisions, statements providing the decision information to the students, questions not requiring decisions, and control procedures on student's memory for chemistry text reading materials. Discusses results in terms of an elaboration perspective on…

Examines the effect of verbalization on the formation and retention of mental images in children in kindergarten, first, and fifth grades. Reports no self-generated verbalization effect with gender or ability level and no retention effect. (Author)

Method is presented for displaying the sequential and multirelational ideation of scientific narrative elicited from respondents. The flow map provides a figural representation of the flow of information, the points in the flow where multirelational and recurrent linkages are made, and the time required to retrieve and express the information at…

Reviews the neural modeling principles of learning, perception, cognition, and motor control, discusses their applications to sensory-motor problem solving, and explores possible relationships between that pattern of problem solving and aspects of higher order formal operational problem solving. Cites implications for science education. (ML)

Examines the relationships between the development of proportional reasoning strategies and three cognitive variables from Pascual-Leone's and Case's neo-Piagetian theories: (1) degree of field independence; (2) M-space; and (3) short-term storage space. Describes the ability of students to transfer problem-solving schemata to new contexts as well…

Discusses a study that examined the role of four cognitive factors (formal reasoning ability, prior knowledge, field dependence/independence, and memory capacity) on achievement in chemistry as measured by tests of lab application, chemical calculations, and content knowledge. Reports the significance of prior knowledge and formal reasoning…

Reports long-term effects of intensive instruction in the cue attendance or hypothesis generation on open-exploration behavior of 120 ninth graders. Five dependent measures included: number of observed details; number and quality of hypotheses; and number and diversity of questions. Results suggest long-term benefits. (Author/JN)

Examined is the predictive value of the cognitive variables of developmental level, mental capacity, cognitive style, short-term storage space, and numerical inductive reasoning for student achievement in college science. Included is a strategy for the development of materials which would allow students to develop problem-solving skills. (KR)