Discusses children's ideas about colored objects and colored shadows, with special attention to the organization of these ideas into mental models. The clarification of these models provides instructional tools that serve to assess and confront students' naive conceptions. Subjects were visitors to a science museum who engaged in interactive…

Compares 7 biology faculty members, 9 genetic counselors, and 26 undergraduate students according to both expertise and problem-solving success within the domain of genetics. Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that as expertise is attained, the individual restructures knowledge into a framework based upon the critical dimensions which…

Examines the relationships and development of communities of concepts related to heat and convection among fifth grade students. Discusses the influence of familial and cultural experiences on conceptual development as well as the extent to which competing phenomena affect the development of new conceptual understandings. (Contains 49 references.)…

In this article, the author gives a general introduction of a few ideas on cognitive development in children. In the first part, he deals with the topic of development, a process which concerns the totality of the structures of knowledge. He reviews the stages of development of operational structures, distinguishes four main stages of development,…

Provides information on (1) a general indication of change in the cognitive structure of students associated with chemical comprehension; (2) the comparison of clusters of concepts; and (3) a graphical representation of the links among concepts. Argues that constrained word associations serve as a useful tool for mapping aspects of cognitive…