The purpose of the study is to explore how pre-service teachers perceive buoyancy force affecting an object in a liquid and identify their misunderstandings and misconceptions. Pre-service teachers were interviewed to reveal their understandings of an object' floating, suspending and sinking in a liquid. In addition, they were asked about how an…

The daily influence of new technologies on shaping and reshaping human lives necessitates attention to the ethical development of the future computing workforce. To improve computer science students' ethical decision-making, it is important to know how they make decisions when they face ethical issues. This article contributes to the research and…

The history of educational policy-making in Aotearoa New Zealand is also a history in myth-making. Myths about Maori in education are deeply embedded in educational and social thought, because they have their origins in the first political interactions between Maori and Pakeha. These interactions were motivated by contradicting forces--Maori…

Background and Context: We replicated and expanded on previous work about how well students learn dynamic programming, a difficult topic for students in algorithms class. Their study interviewed a number of students at one university in a single term. We recruited a larger sample size of students, over several terms, in both large public and…

Misinformation has been a pressing issue since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, threatening our ability to effectively act on the crisis. Nevertheless, little is known about the actual effects of fake news on behavioural intentions. Does exposure to or belief in misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines affect people's intentions to receive…

Statisticians and data scientists have been called upon to increase the impact they have through their collaborative projects. Statistics and data science practitioners and their educators can achieve and enable greater impact by learning how to create shared understanding with their collaborators as well as teaching this concept to their…

Information can change: science advances, newspapers retract claims, and reccomendations shift. Successfully navigating the world requires updating and changing beliefs, a process that is sensitive to a person's motivation to change their beliefs as well as the credibility of the source providing the new information. Here, we report three studies…

This paper is about the importance of understanding immigrant Latino parental involvement in the United States' educational system. Misconceptions regarding Latino parental involvement will be presented as a way to help pre-service teachers and educators to understand factors that determine Latino parental involvement. This information can be used…

Commonly accepted beliefs about science are drastically different from the reality. Science is almost universally regarded--at least in developed industrial countries--as the reliable source of understanding of the material world. In fact, science is as fallible as any other human activity, influenced in similar ways by outside interests and…

Background: The term "continued influence effect" (CIE) refers to the phenomenon that discredited and obsolete information continues to affect behavior and beliefs. The practical relevance of this work is particularly apparent as we confront fake news everyday. Thus, an important question becomes, how can we mitigate the continued…

The purpose of the present note is to draw attention to the potential role of a recently discovered visual illusion in creating traffic accidents. The illusion consists in a compelling and immediate experience that the space behind an occluding object in the foreground is empty. Although the illusion refers to a region of space, which is invisible…

We argue for a virtue epistemological approach to the demarcation problem, for we think that such an approach makes sense from the perspective of an ameliorative epistemology. We argue that sustained and consistent pseudoscientific beliefs and attitudes call for an explanation in terms of underlying epistemic vices, and that remedying them calls…

In traditional introductory physics courses, concepts of distance, displacement, speed, velocity, scalars, and vectors are generally taught near the beginning of the course. However, students often contend with preexisting notions, such as the idea that speed and velocity are synonyms, which present some of the first conceptual hurdles that they…

Parents describe a want for better sex education for their young children compared to their own myth and silence-led experiences while growing up. However, introducing the vagina has proved a challenging step too far for many parents. This study arose from a secondary qualitative data analysis of 20 focus groups with parents in Ireland about how…

Textbooks are essential learning resources for both teachers and students, but they often contain misconceptions that can affect students' understanding of key concepts, particularly in biology. Misconceptions can arise from inaccurate or incomplete information, and they may lead to incorrect conceptual understanding. The clarity and accuracy of…