In this paper, we investigate the ways in which 15 year-old students conceive interrelated issues of randomness. We deal with these issues of randomness as a whole and not separately from each other, in contrast to the research so far. In order to analyse the students' ways we introduce a modification of Kyburg's Schema [(1974). "The logical…

The purpose of this study is to investigate students' mental models of the marine environment and to further examine how these models are related to their perceptions of marine problems. One hundred twenty-eight ninth grade students from a large harbor city in southern Taiwan completed a survey including a drawing activity and a set of two-tier…

Student's mental representations of physical concepts are often different from those of scientists. The research aimed to identify and compare mental representations of light propagation time by school children aged 10 (132 subjects), and 14 (109 subjects) years old. This research was conducted through individual interviews in which the students…

Schematic chunks denote patterns, schemes, or sophisticated rules and knowledge stored in the long-term memory in the form of chunks. We investigated whether schematic chunking is effective in improving the performance of students with math difficulties (MD) and students at risk of math failure, and how the complexity level of geometry problems…

This study addresses the need for innovative research approaches in science education for understanding better the inter-relationships between emotion and cognition in learning, using a sociological perspective. Our perspective draws upon the concept of emotional energy that is described as an outcome from successful social interactions during…

This study investigated how question prompts and feedback influenced knowledge acquisition and cognitive load when learning Newtonian mechanics within a web-based multimedia module. Participants were one hundred eighteen 9th grade students who were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, forming a 2 x 2 factorial design with the…

Following up on the effects of learning environments is essential to learning. The aim of this study was to examine students' mental models related to the concepts of expansion and contraction of materials. The population of the case study consisted of 155 students in a city center in Turkey. The data was gathered using open-ended questions that…

Understanding complex systems is fundamental to understanding science. The complexity of science systems makes them very difficult to understand because they are composed of large number of variables with dynamic interdependencies that determines the behavior of the systems. Hence, understanding complex system requires students to build an…

Previous studies have shown that teacher cognitions and practices can be inconsistent, particularly with claims about communicative teaching practices. This article describes the practical theory of a state school EFL teacher in Armenia who claimed to be using a communicative approach to language teaching by considering her stated cognitions and…

The expertise reversal effect occurs when a learning procedure that is effective for novices becomes ineffective for more knowledgeable learners. The authors consider how to match instructional presentations to levels of learner knowledge. Experiments 1-2 were designed to develop a schema-based rapid method of measuring learners' knowledge in a…

Although sampling has been mentioned as part of the chance and data component of the mathematics curriculum since about 1990, little research attention has been aimed specifically at school students' understanding of this descriptive area. This study considers the initial understanding of bias in sampling by 639 students in grades 3, 5, 7, and 9.…