We conducted a series of experiments to investigate the extent to which prompting the construction of a force diagram affects student solutions to simple mechanics problems. A total of 891 university introductory physics students were given typical force and motion problems under one of the two conditions: when a force diagram was or was not…

The US National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy recommend that students understand the apparent patterns of motion of the Sun, Moon, and stars by the end of early elementary school, yet no research has specifically examined these concepts from an Earth-based perspective with this age group. This study examines…

Design-based research, and particularly its theoretical status, is a subject of debate in the science education community. In the first part of this paper, a theoretical framework drawn up to develop design-based research will be presented. This framework is mainly based on epistemological analysis of physics modelling, learning and teaching…

Shows the difficulties of understanding the hypothesis a posteriori. Describes a scientific method containing phenomenologic, hypothetic, and theoretic phases. Provides the results of an experiment on simple pendulum oscillation by using this method. (YP)