The French utopian socialist Charles Fourier is a key figure in Walter Benjamin's "Arcades Project". For Benjamin, one of the most significant aspects of Fourier's utopian vision was its conceptualisation of work as a form of play. According to Fourier it would be possible to build a world around people's inherent desires. In such a…

This article explores how creative visual imagination and creative thinking can help children to construct mental models of space. A mixed-method study, integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches and involving 98 five-year-old children (54 girls and 44 boys) demonstrated that creative visual imagination, rather than creative thinking, is…

Teaching astronomy to young generations is of great importance because astronomy education helps us to better understand the world we are living in and to find answers to our questions. In this regard, the current study aimed to determine the secondary school 4th grade students' mental models of the astronomer. The current research is designed as…

How can physics teachers help students develop consistent problem solving techniques for both simple and complicated physics problems, such as those that encompass objects undergoing multiple forces (mechanical or electrical) as individually portrayed in free-body diagrams and/or phenomenon involving multiple objects, such as Doppler effect…

The current study compared different learners' static and dynamic mental images of unseen scientific species and processes in relation to their spatial ability. Learners were classified into verbal, visual and schematic. Dynamic images were classified into: appearing/disappearing, linear-movement, and rotation. Two types of scientific entities and…

Analyzes the nature and characteristics of the scientific endeavor to compare with that of children's play. Describes science as a form of religious sacred play which creates a world of make-believe that one may enter if one chooses to play. (CC)