This study investigated the effect of the metacognitive instruction in which students' epistemic cognitions were explicitly addressed, on tenth-grade students' conceptual understandings regarding force and motion. The participants of the study included 107 (49 female, 58 male) tenth-grade students at two public high schools. A quasi-experimental…

While a vast body of research has identified difficulties in students' understanding about forces and acceleration and their related alternative conceptions, far less research suggests ways to use students' alternative conceptions to enhance conceptual understanding of a specific fundamental concept. This study focused on distinguishing between…

This paper reports a case study of four grade 10 physical sciences teachers' PCK about graphs of motion. We used three data collection strategies, namely teachers' written accounts, captured by the content representation (CoRe) tool, interviews and classroom observations. We conceptualised the PCK displayed in the CoRe tool and the interviews as…

Science education research suggests that our everyday intuitions of motion and interaction of physical objects fit well with how physicists use the term "momentum". Corpus linguistics provides an easily accessible approach to study language in different domains, including everyday language. Analysis of language samples from English text…

In recent decades, the interactive whiteboard (IWB) has become a relatively common educational tool in Western schools. The IWB is essentially a large touch screen, that enables the user to interact with digital content in ways that are not possible with an ordinary computer-projector-canvas setup. However, the unique possibilities of IWBs are…

The aim of this study was to identify challenges in implementing a physics-before- 10 mathematics curriculum. Obviously, students need to learn necessary mathematics skills in order to develop advanced physics knowledge. In the 2010 high school curriculum in Taiwan, however, grade 11 science students study two-dimensional motion in physics without…

This study investigated the effect of metaconceptual teaching interventions on students' understanding of force and motion concepts. A multimethod research design including quasi-experimental design and case study designs was employed to compare the effect of the metaconceptual activities and traditional instruction and investigate students'…