In 4 studies, the authors examined how intuitions about the relative difficulties of the sciences develop. In Study 1, familiar everyday phenomena in physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and economics were pretested in adults, so as to be equally difficult to explain. When participants in kindergarten, Grades 2, 4, 6, and 8, and college were…

Discusses the "neo-Piagetian" concepts of Juan Pascual-Leone which are present in Piaget's theory. The concepts presented are the repertoire of schemes, mental processing capacity, and field dependence-independence. (Author/SA)

Investigates the development of the concept of heat by children aged four to nine. Analysis revealed 11 thought patterns classified into six categories underlying children's concept of heat. These categories are related to scientific knowledge of the physics of heat. (HM)

Beginning college physics students' misconceptions about moving objects, their mathematics skills, and formal reasoning ability, are all believed to be related to their achievement in physics. It is hypothesized that students whose knowledge structures include misconceptions that are in conflict with concepts in the lectures and text will have…

The author describes activities he uses with secondary school science students to learn about their reasoning. (Author/SA)

Discussed is the idea that energy is the cause of change. This idea, going back to early cognitive development, means that the teaching of energy needs to confront how, thermodynamically, people can perform actions. The change in energy caused by differences is emphasized. (KR)

Investigated cognitive development of eleventh-grade students (N=389) in Jordan and its relationship to comprehension of concrete and formal physics concepts. Results revealed that cognitive level (17% formal; 52% concrete) was related to comprehension of both concrete and formal concepts. Findings related to sex differences are also reported.…

Examined the developmental sequence through which adolescents progress in solving a physics problem (balance beam ratio and proportion) and a social problem (predicting the behavior of a story character). Although most of the 9- through 19-year-olds performed at predictable and similar developmental stages on each task, a minority were more…

The purpose of this report is to examine how well students in Massachusetts are meeting the Goals of Education, as measured by the Massachusetts Education Assessment Program (MEAP). The first section of this report defines various levels of proficiency and then compares different groups within the student population in terms of the percentages…

Examined relationship between cognitive requirements of two chapters of a physics textbook for biology/pre-med students and their ability to use prerequisite reasoning skills required for its understanding. An average of 42 percent of students tested did not consistently use reasoning skills required to understand text concepts. Discusses tests…

This study reports a new analysis of data on children's ideas about direct current (DC) electrical circuits. The analysis is theoretically informed by Piagetian stage theory of genetic epistemology. The limits of the genetic epistemology are discussed. (KR)

The purpose of this study was to: (1) assess the reasoning levels of students using the Longeot Test; (2) compare the background of each student with the student's reasoning ability; and (3) identify which factors would best determine a student's reasoning level on the Longeot Test. The sample consisted of 636 students (336 females and 300 males)…