This guidance report focuses on the teaching of mathematics to pupils in Key Stages 2 and 3. It is not intended to provide a comprehensive guide to mathematics teaching. We have made recommendations where there are research findings that schools can use to make a significant difference to pupils' learning, and have focused on the questions that…

This study is intended to review some of the selected researches carried out on students' understandings of enthalpy and spontaneity. The review puts together the important findings of the researches, summarises the misunderstandings identified so far and the possible sources of these misunderstandings. Therefore, this study would be beneficial…

Concepts used by two classes of grade eight students, one advanced and the other average, to explain the changes that occur when water is heated to boiling are presented. Little difference was found between groups in terms of the personal misconceptions used to explain boiling. The changes that take place in conceptual knowledge immediately after…

The pencil-and-paper assignment "Represent water in its three states using a model" was given to pupils (n=227) from eighth to twelfth grades. The findings show that the dominant model used was the space filling type; movement of particles was indicated by a minority of pupils; size of the model changed when drawn in different states.…

Maintains that misperceptions or incorrect mental images about relative location and size are common in geography. Reports on a study of 708 students ranging in age from junior high school through undergraduate school. Finds that misperceptions are widespread and exist across grade levels. (CFR)

High school students' misunderstandings of the conceptual machine of the BASIC programming language were examined using a screening test and structured interviews to determine their understanding of fundamental concepts such as variables, assignments, loops, flow and control, and tracing and debugging. (MBR)

Describes an undergraduate psychology class that required the students to either write an essay (counterattitudinal advocacy) or read an essay supporting a scientifically acceptable position contrary to one of their beliefs. Maintains that counterattitudinal advocacy is more effective for overcoming beginning students' erroneous beliefs about…

Diagnoses of students' performance on procedural mathematical tasks need to display a certain level of stability and robustness if they are to be used as the basis for remediation, particularly with computer-delivered instruction. The purpose of this study was to compare two diagnostic approaches for describing students' (n=231) errors in algebra…

This study examines the relationship between children's procedural and conceptual understanding of mathematics and their accuracy in reporting and interpreting geography text material containing mathematical information. It was hypothesized that (1) children's misconceptions or lack of experience with particular mathematical content areas would be…