While technology advancement and scientific innovation have created new topics and fields of inquiry in STEM education, external content experts such as university scientists/researchers have been increasingly involved to enhance K-12 teachers' disciplinary understandings and professional development (PD). However, few studies have scrutinized…

There is a long tradition of teaching science through inquiry, with broad agreement about the form it should take. Students should investigate researchable questions; gather and analyse data; and develop and represent evidence-based claims. Authoritative teacher or textbook representations are generally used to guide this learning (Buckley &…

We applied latent class analysis and the rule space model to verify the cumulative characteristic of conceptual change by developing a learning progression for buoyancy. For this study, we first abstracted seven attributes of buoyancy and then developed a hypothesized learning progression for buoyancy. A 14-item buoyancy instrument was…

Understanding scientific models and practicing scientific modeling have been emphasized and advocated in science learning. Although teachers have been perceived as shaping their students' understanding of the nature of science, they have been recognized for their lack of understanding of scientific models. This study explores middle school science…

Informal formative assessments (IFAs) are classroom interactions teachers use to gather information about their students' learning, interpret it, and act on this information to achieve academic goals. One of the responses science teachers can enact as the result of IFA is constructing explanations to clarify science concepts to their students.…

The theory of conceptual change is criticized because it focuses only on supposed underlying logical structures and rational process processes, and lacks attention to affective aspects as well as motivational constructs in students' learning science. This is a vast underestimation of the complexity and diversity of one's change of conceptions. The…

Tracks five-year-old children's ideas by a range of means during and subsequent to a classroom sequence on evaporation. Explores the relationship between social and individual perspectives on learning, and questions some assumptions underlying conceptual change research. Analyzes the children's explanations of various evaporation phenomena over…

Correlates the kinds of strategies associated with a deep approach to learning science. Analyzes the interactions of two groups of grade 8 students while they were engaged in hands-on science activities during instruction in a chemistry unit. Focuses on two students who showed a deep approach to learning. (Contains 47 references.) (Author/YDS)

This study examines the nature and process of ninth grade students' conceptual change regarding their mental model of dissolution and diffusion as a result of instructions using the Dual Situated Learning Model (DSLM). The dual situated learning events of this model are designed according to the students' ontological viewpoint of the science…

Young pupils find collaborative learning hard to sustain, even though it is recommended by developmental psychology and classroom intervention theories. Investigates the effect of two role attribution strategies on communication in peer groups of different gender composition in 8th grade science classes. Confirms the effectiveness of social role…