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…

People often think that power only flows downhill in school. The author draws on his own research observations, as well as the philosophy of Michel Foucault, to offer more nuanced insights. He explains that power is not a "thing" people can possess and that it flows in multiple directions, forming a web of influence. These insights…

The nature of students' ideas about the scientific practices used by astronomers when studying objects in our Solar System is of widespread interest to discipline-based astronomy education researchers. A sample of middle-school, high-school, and college students (N = 42) in the U.S. were interviewed about how astronomers were able to learn about…

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological was to describe teacher efficacy in the lived experiences of secondary teachers actively engaged in the instructional coaching process. The theoretical framework guiding this study was Albert Bandura's (1992) social cognitive theory as it expounds upon the role efficacy plays in human agency as it…

Climate change encompasses a broad and complex set of concepts that is often challenging for students and educators. Using a learning progressions (LPs) knowledge system, we developed a LP that described student learning of climate change. In this exploratory study, we present findings from written assessments of climate change (n = 294) and…

Empirical evidence from the National Education Inspectorate suggested that teachers at the primary school in this study in an island country in the Caribbean have inadequate science content knowledge. Students' average performance on the science Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) has been below 40% for the last 5 years. The purpose of this bounded…

Formative assessment has been identified as an effective pedagogical practice in the field of education, where teachers and students engage daily in an interactive process to gather evidence of the students' proficiency of a specific learning goal. The evidence collected by the teacher and a student during the formative assessment process allows…

Purpose: The rationale behind this study was to investigate how three Grade 5 Natural Sciences teachers in three Western Cape primary schools teach science concepts so as to enable the researcher to gain a deeper understanding and more insightful perception of the ways in which the pedagogical practices of South African primary school teachers…

In Thailand, the new educational policy is mandated to encourage content teachers to integrate English in content classrooms. The policy has created tensions and misconceptions among content teachers, who must change the medium of instruction from Thai to English. This paper presents an attempt to foster teacher knowledge about the Content and…

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) highlight the importance of students' conceptual understanding, mathematical reasoning, and problem solving in order to prepare students for college and careers. However, the success of this reform effort largely depends on how teachers actually design and implement instruction based on the…

Based on a study with six elementary school teachers and 115 students in grades 3, 4, and 5, this article discusses ways that teachers might support an understanding of variable as students explore pattern-finding activities. The practices emerged from interviews with teachers and a yearlong observation of teaching algebraic thinking during an…

This paper reports on a study to determine whether blind students' conceptualizations of force and motion differ from sighted students. This is particularly concerned with the question of whether the students' visual experiences have any relation to their conceptualizations or misconceptualization about force and motion. The research was designed…

Students' different background knowledge determines their quality of conceptions towards a specific subject in college. This research sought to uncover the profile of misconceptions experienced by 48 students of Primary School Teaching Major, studying Science in University of Muhammadiyah Gresik. The educational background of the students in high…

This study examined processes at the core of teacher professional development (PD) experiences that might positively impact teacher learning and more specifically teacher change. Four processes were considered in the context of a PD program focused on student mathematical errors: analysis of students' mathematical misconceptions as a lever for…

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for diagnosing teaching difficulties of a science topic in the science classroom. The development of the framework is presented as well as descriptions of the features of the framework. How the framework can be used is also elaborated? Furthermore, there is a detailed indication of an…