Diverse implicit cognitive elements seem to support but also constrain reasoning in different domains. Many of these cognitive constraints can be thought of as either implicit assumptions about the nature of things or reasoning heuristics for decision-making. In this study we applied this framework to investigate college students' understanding of…

The connection between the molecular-level structure of a substance and its macroscopic properties is a fundamental concept in chemistry. Students in college-level general and organic chemistry courses were interviewed to investigate how they used structure-property relationships to predict properties such as melting and boiling points. Although…

This study investigated the potential of students' written and oral questions both as an epistemic probe and heuristic for initiating collaborative argumentation in science. Four classes of students, aged 12-14 years from two countries, were asked to discuss which of two graphs best represented the change in temperature as ice was heated to steam.…

This study aims to add to the growing research related to the implementation of non-traditional writing tasks in classrooms to encourage science literacy. A secondary reanalysis methodology was employed to review student interviews collected as a part of several individual studies during a ten year research program. This method established an…