Comenius (1592-1670) has been widely studied in educational research, although limited work has addressed his thinking about science education comprehensively. His Pansophist philosophy led him to believe that science was a necessary subject for all ("Omnes"). Comenius emphasised useful scientific knowledge and core principles…

In the spirit of model revision, researchers continue to refine the notion of a learning progression. Despite many advances in learning progressions research, one key design element has eluded scholarly critique, the upper anchor. Drawing on science education research and studies of science, this essay argues for a shift from the predominant model…

The Precipitating Change Project was a 5-year development, implementation, and research study of an innovative 4-week middle school curricular unit in computational weather forecasting that integrates students' learning and use of meteorology and computational thinking (CT) concepts and practices. The project produced a list of CT skills and…

An introductory physics course may be run like a video game, where students have an almost unlimited number of attempts to demonstrate their competencies through a sequence of zero-penalty assessments until the end of a semester. Each checkpoint is conducted as a 10-minute, one-on-one oral interview with the instructor, and students are not…

Writing in science can be challenging for all learners, and it is especially so for students with cognitive or language-based learning difficulties. We examined the effects of a cognitive apprenticeship on student disciplinary writing skills as well as near and far transfer of learning outcomes. This instructional approach included a gradual…

This dissertation examines the thesis that implicit learning plays a role in learning about scientific phenomena, and subsequently, in conceptual change. Decades of research in learning science demonstrate that a primary challenge of science education is overcoming prior, naive knowledge of natural phenomena in order to gain scientific…

Introducing Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NST) topics into school science curricula is considered useful for an in-depth understanding of the content, processes and nature of science and technology, and also for negotiating the social aspects of science. This study examines (a) the development of an inquiry-based Teaching-Learning Sequence (TLS)…

The purpose of this study was to use drama as a springboard for promoting argumentation among 91 first-semester undergraduate medical students (56 females and 35 males, 16-30 years old) in Colombia during a complete teaching-learning sequence (TLS) supervised by the same teacher. The drama used was the play "Should've," written by Nobel…

Science teaching and learning require knowledge about how learning takes place (cognition) and how learners interact with their surroundings (affective and sociocultural factors). The study reported on focussed on learning for understanding of Newton's second law of motion from a cognitive perspective that takes social factors into account. A…

This is the start of a road map for the effective introduction of inquiry-based learning in chemistry. Advantages of inquiry-based approaches to the development of scientific literacy are widely discussed in the literature. However, unless chemistry educators take account of teachers' reservations and identified disadvantages such approaches will…

The learning cycle is a way to structure inquiry in school science and occurs in several sequential phases. A learning cycle moves children through a scientific investigation by having them first explore materials, then construct a concept, and finally apply or extend the concept to other situations. Why the learning cycle? Because it is a…

Reviews the individualized format of the Keller Plan and an audiotutorial approach. Outlines differences in student thinking strategies and explores the implications of these differences in the realms of teaching strategies and questioning techniques. Advocates improvement in assessing when each learner is ready for which content. (GS)

Describes major theses of Piaget's work on development of intelligence. Implications of this work are significant in terms of methods, curriculum, and sequence of topics and activities used in science classrooms. Author cautions, however, that work of other child psychologists should not be completely forgotten because of Piaget's ideas. (PS)

In two H[subscript 2] [superscript 15]O PET scan experiments, we investigated the cerebral correlates of explicit and implicit knowledge in a serial reaction time (SRT) task. To do so, we used a novel application of the Process Dissociation Procedure, a behavioral paradigm that makes it possible to separately assess conscious and unconscious…

A study examined the way graduate students solved mechanism problems that were far removed from the simple systems in which mechanisms are traditionally presented. One aim is to probe the extent to which the students' experiences with the organic chemistry as undergraduates prepared them to solve mechanism problems they were likely to face as…