Discussions with 27 focus groups of third to sixth graders revealed a high level of AIDS awareness and correct knowledge about transmission and prevention. Many had difficulty explaining causation and overestimated numbers of children possibly affected. Misconceptions were more prevalent in lower grades. (SK)

The aim of this study is to investigate Emiratii high school students' understandings of stoichiometry, their use of metacognitive strategies, and the influence of students' use of metacognitive strategies on their understandings of stoichiometry. Two instruments were used in this study, the first to measure students' understandings of…

Palmore's Facts on Aging Quiz was completed by 245 respondents (28%) from developmental disabilities (DD), aging, and other social service agencies in Washington. Overall, respondents got 64% correct; DD personnel scored lower than others. Most often missed items related to psychological aspects of aging, demographic trends, and socioeconomic…

It is known that naive observers have striking misconceptions about mirror reflections. In 5 experiments, this article systematically extends the findings to graphic stimuli, to interactive visual tasks, and finally to tasks involving real mirrors. The results show that the perceptual knowledge of nonexpert adults is far superior to their…

Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AS) are pharmacologic derivatives of the hormone testosterone. They have therapeutic merit when used under a physician's prescription to treat certain hormonal imbalances and some forms of anemia; however, when taken in high doses they have a number of virilizing, feminizing, toxic, and psychological effects. This…

Explores and documents the frequencies of conceptual difficulties confronted by college students (n=200) seeking to understand the basic processes of cellular respiration. Findings suggest that novices harbor a wide range of conceptual difficulties that constrain their understanding of cellular respiration and many of these conceptual problems…

Semistructured interviews with 15 masters-level biology students revealed that most proposed deterministic explanations of evolutionary processes, ignored the role of chance, seemed unaware of debates over deterministic versus probabilistic models of evolution, and confused evolutionary theory (a model) with the actual complex processes it…

The challenge of education is to preserve the imagination, questioning, and theoretical stance of a five year old, but gradually replace unfounded prejudices and mind-engravings with more accurate theories, ideas, conceptions, and stories. Correct test answers seldom signify genuine understanding. Gardner's book "The Unschooled Mind"…

The study of preservice elementary teachers' knowledge of fractions is important because fractions are notoriously difficult to learn and teach. Unfortunately, studies of preservice teachers' fraction knowledge are limited and have focused primarily on division. The present study included all four operations to provide a more comprehensive…

Knowledge of animals may influence children's beliefs and behaviour toward them, thus building positive attitudes toward animals is one of main goals of environmental education programmes. Although keeping animals contributes to the increase of children's positive attitudes toward wild animals, pet owners show similar negative attitudes toward…

Earthquake, a natural disaster, is among the fundamental problems of many countries. If people know how to protect themselves from earthquake and arrange their life styles in compliance with this, damage they will suffer will reduce to that extent. In particular, a good training regarding earthquake to be received in primary schools is considered…

In 2002, the geographic knowledge of college-age students in the North was highlighted in a survey sponsored by the National Geographic Society. Students in the U.S. ranked second to last among those surveyed on questions assessing basic knowledge of world geography. That many young adults got "the facts" wrong about particular places…

In this article we report on a group activity, based on previous work [Hansson & Redfors: 2006b, "Science & Education" (accepted)], in an upper secondary physics class in Sweden. The aim was to engage students in a discussion about which presuppositions that are really necessary for physics. During the activity the students were…

The 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2017) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Optics Velley Kingdom Plaza Hotel, Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. This years conference features two invited talks by: Dr. Jie Tang, Associate Professor with the Department of Computer…

This study was conducted to assess the perceptions of school psychologists regarding myths and misconceptions pertaining to traumatic brain injury (TBI). A sample of 304 school psychologists in the state of North Carolina was surveyed on 11 common myths and misconceptions about TBI. Results indicated that this group performed significantly better…