When establishing connections among representations of associated mathematical concepts, students encounter different difficulties and successes along the way. The purpose of this study was to uncover information about and gain greater insight into how student processes connections. Pre-calculus students were observed and interviewed while…

This study examines how third-graders' conceptions about the origin of species are affected by formal instruction and whether children can learn not only about evolution but also about natural selection. We interviewed the same group of third-grade children (8-9 years old) twice, before and after following a curriculum about these topics.…

The main goal of this study was to investigate how readers' visual attention distribution during reading of conflicting science information is related to their scientific reasoning behavior. A total of 25 university students voluntarily participated in the study. They were given conflicting science information about earthquake predictions to read…

Purposes: This study uses think-alouds and cognitive interviews to provide validity evidence for an online formative assessment--i-Ready Standards Mastery (iSM) mini-assessments--which involves a heavy use of innovative items. iSM mini-assessments are intended to help teachers determine student understanding of each of the on-grade-level Common…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the cognitive processes used by individuals who read a refutational text about physics and demonstrated conceptual change learning. Four high school readers whose initial conceptions differed from the scientific conception of Newton's first law thought aloud while reading a refutational…

The purpose of this study is to explore how an online-structured dialogue environment supported (OSDE) collaborative learning about the nature of science among a group of trainee science teachers in the UK. The software used (InterLoc) is a linear text-based tool, designed to support structured argumentation with openers and "dialogue…

The purpose of this study was primarily to explore high school students' cognitive structures and to identify their learning difficulties on ethanoic acid through the flow map method. The subjects of this study were 30 grade 1 students from Dong Yuan Road Senior High School in Xi'an, China. The interviews were conducted a week after the students…

The purpose of this study is to examine the proportional reasoning of pre-service teachers at the beginning of their teacher preparation program using the developmental shifts described by Lobato and Ellis (2010). They cast changes in proportional reasoning as transitions or "shifts" in students' thinking and these shifts can serve as…

Inequalities are one of the foundational subjects in high school math curricula, but there is a lack of academic research into how students learn certain types of inequalities. This article fills part of the research gap by presenting the findings of a study that examined high school students' methods of approaching absolute value inequalities,…

Even 150 years after Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," public school teachers still find themselves dealing with student resistance to learning about biological evolution. Some teachers deal with this pressure by undermining, deemphasizing, or even omitting the topic in their science curriculum. Others face the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate why some individuals who read refutational text demonstrate conceptual change learning, whereas others do not. Middle school students were asked to complete a pretest, read a refutational text while thinking aloud, complete a posttest, and participate in an interview. The data were analyzed in two…

Students often hold misconceptions that conflict with scientific explanations. Research has shown that refutation texts are effective for facilitating conceptual change in these cases (Guzzetti, Snyder, Glass, & Gamas, 1993). The process through which refutation texts have their effect is not clear. The authors replicated and extended previous…

This article explores 11- to 16-year-old students' explanations for phenomena commonly studied in school chemistry from an inclusive cognitive resources or knowledge-in-pieces perspective that considers that student utterances may reflect the activation of knowledge elements at a range of levels of explicitness. We report 5 themes in student…

Teacher compensation reforms have been on the rise in recent years, yet research has yet to fully demonstrate how teachers interpret these policies and how they may influence their instructional practices and professional decisions. This qualitative study of a performance pay program in an urban district in Texas drew on cognitive approaches to…

Confidence intervals are beginning to play an increasing role in the reporting of research findings within the social and behavioral sciences and, consequently, are becoming more prevalent in beginning classes in statistics and research methods. Confidence intervals are an attractive means of conveying experimental results, as they contain a…