Light is used ubiquitously across science and engineering to explore, characterise, understand matter, and catalyse processes. Relative to its utility in science and engineering, very little research has been conducted on how students develop an understanding of light-matter interactions, especially at the quantum level, which is necessary to…

The aim of this study is to determine the pre-service teachers' perceptions of atom and atomic structure through a word association test. It is important to concretize the concepts having a significant influence on the learning of subjects. Through this concretization, students' understanding of the concepts and accordingly of the subjects is…

Research shows that well before children can verbalize their thoughts, they often create internal visual models of what scientists are and what they do (Farland-Smith 2012). Therefore, discovering, understanding and recording a student's own stereotypical perceptions are crucial to science instructors, as it is believed that perceptions may affect…

Mental models play an important role in science education research. To extend the effectiveness of conceptual change research and to improve mental model identi?cation and diagnosis, the authors developed and tested the Web-Based Mental Models Diagnosis (WMMD) system. In this article, they describe their WMMD system, which goes beyond the…

This article reports on a study which used the APOS (action-process-object-schema) theoretical framework to investigate university students' understanding of derivatives and their applications. Research was done at the Westville Campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The relevant rules for finding derivatives and their…

This study compared the effects of a constructivist-visual mind map teaching approach (CMA) and of a traditional teaching approach (TTA) on (a) the quality and richness of students' knowledge structures and (b) TTA and CMA students' perceptions of the extent that a constructivist learning environment (CLE) was created in their classes. The sample…

Given that enhancing the motivation of young people for science is a widely shared goal, the question posed is how to raise intellectual satisfaction among students by showing the consistency and conciseness of physical theories. I argue that certain rituals in our teaching practices can make physical theories seem inconsistent, even absurd. Using…

Discusses students' perceptions of using writing as a component of their science learning. Results, collected over four years, are organized to include students' perceptions of writing in science, learning, ownership, purpose, and science. These results are then discussed in terms of students' developing metacognition and epistemologies of…

Assessed the impact of elementary science experiences on the development of sixth-graders' epistemological views. Found that, compared to students in a traditional science classroom, those in a constructivist classroom developed an epistemological stance toward science that focused on the central role of ideas in the knowledge acquisition process.…

Investigations of changes in conceptions during physics instruction are the logical and necessary steps to follow successful international research on students' preinstructional conceptions. The theoretical perspective integrates currently available frameworks of cognition, cognitive states, and cognitive processes in physics. Particular emphasis…

The broad focus of this study was on the role students' existing conceptions play in the process of constructing and understanding mechanics concepts. The study was a naturalistic one, conducted over a number of years, at all grade levels, in one all-boys secondary school in Australia. In particular it was concerned with identifying and…

This study explored the possibility of developing classroom strategies that would encourage physics teachers to put greater focus on a more qualitative, metacognitive approach to problem solving. The empirical part of this research was carried out with students approximately 16 years of age in physics (i.e., introductory Newtorian mechanics)…

Some interesting work currently being done in science education research is with scientifically misconceived ideas about the causes and mechanisms of natural phenomena. Though not stated explicitly, it can be inferred from the corpus of this misconception research that an assumption of homogeneity among students is made, even where there is…

This paper attempts to create a vision of what it would be like to teach for understanding, to adopt the view of learner as constructor of his or her own understanding, and to share in the creation of an environment for reconstructing students' understanding and reasoning. Such a program is based on assumptions about the cognition of learners,…

Reports on a study of 323 Nigerian secondary students to determine what relationship exists between preferred and actual classroom environments and their approaches to learning science. Finds that Nigerian students prefer more teacher control, a less competitive atmosphere, and less emphasis on student friendships. (CFR)