The use of analogies is a well-known teaching strategy to bridge unfamiliar and familiar concepts. However, analogies may become ineffective if the familiar concept is not familiar anymore. For example, this may occur when we describe rotational sense as clockwise and counterclockwise, assuming students know how to read a clock with hour and…

The purpose of this study is to examine the kinds of reasoning that African American young men learn and develop when playing Spades, a common cultural practice in African American communities. The qualitative study found that the Spades players routinely consider multiple variables and their mathematical relationships when making decisions. The…

This paper describes the effects of learning support on simulation-based learning in three learning models: experiment prompting, a hypothesis menu, and step guidance. A simulation learning system was implemented based on these three models, and the differences between simulation-based learning and traditional laboratory learning were explored in…

The purpose of this study was to: (1) investigate the relationship between the learning approaches of high school students, their prior knowledge, and their attitudes toward chemistry, and their performance on a misconceptions test; and (2) describe and analyze the differences between the responses of students of different learning approaches on…

Explores the influences of text structure on students' conceptual change. Case studies were conducted and results showed that individuals used refutational text to change their alternative conceptions and acquire new concepts. Findings indicate that refutational text does cause cognitive conflict. While refutational text is effective for groups,…

As part of an investigation of the effectiveness of a microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) activity in developing students' graphing skills, this study was specifically designed to examine the differences between females and males in both performance on graphing tasks and on their attitudes to graphs and graph-based activities. Results based on a…

Reviews a monograph which addresses children's higher-order thinking skills. Suggests the following for teaching problem solving: identify and develop content-independent and content-dependent problem-solving skills, connect developed skills through workshop-style activities to subject discipline, and help students identify and reconstruct their…

Higher order cognitive development and success in the study of high school mathematics and science require an understanding of rational number concepts and facility with proportional reasoning and computation. Proportional reasoning is an essential schema for developing formal operational thought. This study involving 16 ninth-grade students was…