In science, one of the most crucial representations for constructing meaning about physical events is graphs. The first graph students encounter in science class is the constant velocity motion graph. Therefore, examining students' understanding of structuring and interpreting these graphs for the relationship between distance, time, and velocity…

The use of analogies is a well-known teaching strategy to bridge unfamiliar and familiar concepts. However, analogies may become ineffective if the familiar concept is not familiar anymore. For example, this may occur when we describe rotational sense as clockwise and counterclockwise, assuming students know how to read a clock with hour and…

An ability to engage in system thinking is necessary to understand complex problems. While many pre-college students use system modeling tools, there is limited evidence of student reasoning about causal relationships that interact in diverging and converging chains, and how these affect system behavior. A chemistry unit on gas phenomena was…

Analogies can be powerful teaching tools because they can make new material intelligible to students by comparing it to material that is already familiar. In assisting students to understand chemistry concepts, teachers occasionally use analogies. These analogies are believed to help the students to structure the new knowledge and they are…

Contextual features of assessments can influence the ideas students draw from and the ways they assemble knowledge. We used a mixed-methods approach to explore how surface-level item context impacts student reasoning. In study 1, we developed an isomorphic survey to capture student reasoning about fluid dynamics, a crosscutting phenomenon, in two…

The third edition of the ASE's "Teaching Secondary Biology" sets out a vision for teaching and learning biology. Learning biology is not about learning the contents of a textbook. It is about conceptual learning, learning what it means to do biology and learning what it means to be a biologist. Our hope is that "Teaching Secondary…

Conceptual approaches to contemporary physics topics pose many learning challenges. One factor influencing knowledge integration is a student's epistemic framing. Epistemic frames provide a context within which a particular situation is perceived, interpreted, and judged. The objective of this study is to explore secondary students' framings…

Understanding human behavior and reasoning is essential for developing successful instruction. Discipline-based education researchers have examined how students learn, informing the development of successful instructional strategies. Researchers have also identified barriers to the successful implementation of such strategies. This work utilizes…

When students were exposed to cognitive conflict and 5E teaching models, this study looked at the impact of cognitive ability on their conceptual change in the particulate nature of matter in physics. With a sample of 195 first-year upper secondary school students, the study used a quasi-experimental design with non-equivalent groups. The data…

Student difficulties with making sense of graphs in physics have been thoroughly reported. In the study of one-dimensional waves, the issue is even trickier since the amplitude is a function of two variables (position and time). In this work, we investigate students' reasoning and difficulties with interpreting the graphical representation of the…

Analogies are useful tools for teaching difficult scientific concepts and clearing up learners' misconceptions. However, if not properly used, they can lead to further misconceptions. More importantly, little is known about how science teachers use analogies in Nigerian classrooms. This study assessed science teachers' use of analogies by…

"Complex systems" is a general-purpose reasoning scheme, used in a wide range of disciplines to make sense of systems with many similar entities. In this paper, we examine the generality of this approach in learning chemistry. Students' reasoning in chemistry in terms of emergent complex systems is explored for two curricula: a normative…

Resonance is a fundamental concept that is necessary for students' successful learning in organic chemistry. However, there is a need to know more about both (1) what students find important when describing resonance and (2) students' conceptual understanding. This research seeks to address this discrepancy by examining second-semester organic…

To support the development of more robust conceptual knowledge, it is crucial to understand the alternative conceptions that students bring to the classroom, and how these can be considered and dealt with through instruction. In this study, we report the alternative conceptions of 498 students enrolled in secondary education in Ireland. A…

Polarization of light is one of the topics in the Croatian high school physics curriculum. It is taught in the final year of high school education. Twenty-seven Croatian high-school students (aged 18-19 years) were interviewed after regular instruction about their understanding of polarization of light and the model of light itself. This paper…