The central goal of this research study was to characterise the different types of reasoning manifested by high school chemistry students when building initial written explanations of a natural phenomenon. In particular, our study participants were asked to explain why a mixture of water and alcohol works as an antifreeze. Data collected in the…

Understanding how chemistry teachers' interventions shape the reasoning that students express after a lesson is critical to support prospective and in-service teachers as they work with students' ideas in the classroom. In this qualitative research study, we analysed changes in the reasoning expressed by 10th grade students in a Chilean school in…

The ability of science undergraduate students to capably communicate course content and their understanding of scientific phenomena through writing has long been considered a problem. Effective methods for improving student writing skills are often fragmented and undertaken on a course-by-course basis rather than as a coordinated approach. This…

This study examines how a class of Grade 7 students employed linguistic resources to explain density differences. Drawing from the same data-set as a previous study by, we take a language perspective to investigate the challenges students face in learning the concept of density. Our study thus complements previous research on learning about…

D. Elkonin's thesis that thinking is much more closely related to writing than to oral speech formed the basis of our three-year formative experiment at the elementary school level. In order to test this idea, second-graders through fourth-graders were given a few assignments in which they were asked to exchange thoughts in writing with their…

The purpose of the current study is to determine biology student teachers' cognitive structures on the concept of microscope. Qualitative research methodology has been applied in the study. The data were collected from biology student teachers. Free word association test and drawing-writing test were used to collect data. The data collected were…

The development of subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge has been the focus of much educational research and debate in recent years. Of particular interest is the process by which preservice science teachers develop pedagogical content knowledge from their subject knowledge. In the study presented here, a process of writing narrative…

This paper explores Malaysian students' problems within their science and engineering tertiary courses in Japanese through their diary entries and semi-structured interviews. The study analyses how students implement management strategies to overcome their problems. Although many studies are available regarding students' academic activities in a…

In this paper we studied the effectiveness of the writing criteria that are proposed to be applied during the construction of physics texts so that students with dyslexia do not confront reading difficulties with them. The effectiveness of the criteria has been assessed by the accomplishment of an investigation among students with and without…

This study aims to add to the growing research related to the implementation of non-traditional writing tasks in classrooms to encourage science literacy. A secondary reanalysis methodology was employed to review student interviews collected as a part of several individual studies during a ten year research program. This method established an…

In 2006-2007, we established a writing exercise in two large first-year biology courses. Overall, our exercise, which consisted of multiple drafts of a 500-word essay, offered students a good introduction to how editorial feedback can improve content and style in scientific writing. We discuss our goals, procedures, outcome, and students'…

Today's curricula must incorporate activities that help students make science concepts and skills their own. Many suggest that teachers should allow students to relate classroom lessons to their own lives, explore a wide variety of applications and connections to other knowledge and experience, and consolidate the learning in ways they will…