Reform to the Chilean educational system seeks to improve public education, adapting the school curriculum to new technologies and the information revolution. Our study focused on highlighting potential issues with environmental and technological education, offering opportunities to complement the current Chilean curriculum with an…

When students reason during school science, they often refer to conceptions that are derived from out-of-school experiences and are poor proxies for science orthodoxy. However, for some areas of science, these conceptions represent only a proportion of students' full conceptual knowledge, for tacit understanding exists that is superior to the…

Teaching and learning are time-dependant processes. It can be hypothesised that the content coherence during a teaching sequence is an important factor of learning. In this perspective, it is of great interest to follow the occurrences of a notion and the development of its meanings in the classroom discourse, all along the various sessions of a…

Australia wide, all school systems are in the process of providing teachers with computers and there is an expectation that new teachers will possess the expertise to use them in their teaching. In addition to using computers for basic word processing and data manipulation, early-career science teachers need to be able to use a range of…

The main goal of most physics textbooks is to develop declarative and procedural knowledge. Exercises provide pupils with opportunities to apply this knowledge. However, when confronted with more complicated exercises many pupils experience difficulties in solving them. A computer program about the subject of forces was developed containing hints…

Evaluates a new version of software explicitly designed to make links with several external factors, in particular with another software application for supporting investigative work in practical science. Explores the contributions to the learning process made by the teacher, the student, and the software itself. (Author/SAH)

This study investigated prospective secondary science teachers' understandings of and intentions to teach about scientific modelling in the context of a model-based instructional module. Qualitative methods were used to explore the influence of instruction using dynamic computer modelling. Participants included 14 secondary science prospective…