Environmental education is becoming a growing area of interest in early childhood education. In France, more time is given to environmental education activities in the preschool curriculum. Yet, there is a risk of narrowing preschool environmental education only to carry out pro-environmental behaviours, without giving pupils the opportunity to…

Background: Many researchers have investigated student reasoning in Newtonian mechanics. In 1979 Viennot revealed that most students associate the concept of force with the velocity or acceleration of a motion. Forty years later, student understandings remain a major challenge for teachers. The implications of this challenge are still unclear,…

In this article, we describe the main phases in the development and validation of a questionnaire measuring secondary students' teleology and essentialism conceptions in the context of genetics. The validation process involved 714 Swiss and French secondary school students from 14 different schools. The process included interviews, several pilot…

Describes an investigation that explores students' understanding of the translation, rotation, and deformation of an object. Findings illustrate that students have difficulty appreciating that these different phenomena can occur simultaneously. Discusses some implications for teaching. (DDR)

This study aims to better understand the construction of the meaning of physics concepts in mechanics during a teaching sequence at the upper secondary school level. In the teaching sessions, students were introduced to the concepts of interaction and force. During this teaching sequence the models called "interactions" and "laws of…

Reports on the results of an investigation into the understanding of the concepts of basic electricity by French students from grade six up through the fourth year of college. Discusses the misconceptions formed and the challenges these present to physics educators. (TW)