The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) has been used to assess student understanding of introductory concepts of electricity and magnetism because many of the items on the CSEM have strong distractor choices which correspond to students' alternate conceptions. Instruction is unlikely to be effective if instructors do not know…

Comparisons of literary experts and novices indicate that experts engage in interpretive processes to "get the point" during their reading of literary texts but novices do not. In two studies the reading and interpretive processes of literary novices (undergraduates with no formal training in literature study) were elicited through…

We report on the development, validation, and implementation of a collection of test items designed to detect misconceptions related to first-year computer science courses. To this end, we reworked the development scheme proposed by Almstrum et al. ("SIGCSE Bulletin" 38(4):132-145, 2006) to include students' artifacts and to…

In this study, we examine introductory physics students' ability to perform analogical reasoning between two isomorphic problems which employ the same underlying physics principles but have different surface features. 382 students from a calculus-based and an algebra-based introductory physics course were administered a quiz in the recitation…

This thesis explores the role of multiple representations in introductory physics students' problem solving performance through several investigations. Representations can help students focus on the conceptual aspects of physics and play a major role in effective problem solving. Diagrammatic representations can play a particularly important role…

This article reports on an investigation into the different ways that pupils interact with technological artefacts. The results are discussed in the context of the need for first-year "introduction to engineering" courses to develop ways to provide students with an environment that facilitates their meaningful interaction with…

This study used both quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine the influence of written arguments on learning in a college level introductory biology class and the types of metacognition employed by students while writing. Comparison of a treatment and control group indicates that the writing assignments used had minimal impact on overall…

In this report, we address the following questions: What aspects of information do preservice elementary teachers rely on when performing inductive reasoning? What contexts enable them to perceive the inherent invariant relationships from a finite sample and, thus, formulate viable generalizations? To what extent are they able to justify inductive…