Global carbon cycling describes the movement of carbon through atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere; it lies at the heart of climate change and sustainability. To understand the global carbon cycle, students will require "interdisciplinary knowledge." While standards documents in science education have long promoted…

The aim of the present study was to gain an insight into French young people's conceptual development regarding the greenhouse effect. Because this effect cannot be directly manipulated, we can assume that its conceptualization is mainly shaped through the sharing of information. Eighty French students from Grade Seven through to adulthood…

Visual appearance is one of the main cues children rely on when categorizing novel objects. In 3 studies, testing 128 3-year-olds and 192 5-year-olds, we investigated how various kinds of information may differentially lead children to overlook visual appearance in their categorization decisions across domains. Participants saw novel animals or…

This paper studies conceptions of woodwind students regarding learning and teaching music, within the framework of implicit theories. It analyzes whether there are differences related to participants' instruction level, and whether it is possible to identify profiles according to their conceptions. Sixty-eight students from three different levels…

In this article, we present a data set and case study exercise that can be used by educators to teach a range of statistical concepts including Simpson's paradox. The data set and case study are based on a real-life scenario where there was a claim of discrimination based on ethnicity. The exercise highlights the importance of performing rigorous…

Evidentiality in language marks how information contained in a sentence was acquired. For instance, Turkish has two past-tense morphemes that mark whether access to information was direct (typically, perception) or indirect (hearsay/inference). Full acquisition of evidential systems appears to be a late achievement cross-linguistically. Currently,…

Based on a 2-component framework of episodic memory development across the lifespan (Shing & Lindenberger, 2011), we examined the contribution of memory-related binding and monitoring processes to false memory susceptibility in childhood and old age. We administered a repeated continuous recognition task to children (N = 20, 10-12 years),…

Before starting school, many children reason logically about concepts that are basic to their later mathematical learning. We describe a measure of quantitative reasoning that was administered to children at school entry (mean age 5.8 years) and accounted for more variance in a mathematical attainment test than general cognitive ability 16 months…

Guided by a naïve theories perspective on the development of thinking about disease, this study of 188 children aged 6 to 18 examined knowledge of HIV/AIDS causality and prevention using parallel measures derived from open-ended and structured interviews. Knowledge of both risk factors and prevention rules, as well as conceptual understanding of…

Understanding what children know is paramount to planning effective science instruction; however, in any classroom, the students hold a variety of ideas. Representing these differences in ways that also acknowledge the common trends among students might facilitate the process of differentiation. To exemplify one such possible process of…

The present study examined the cognitive factors that influence children's physical science learning from a multimedia instruction. Using a causally coherent text and visual models, we taught 4th- and 7th-grade children about the observable and molecular properties of the three states of water. We manipulated whether the text was read by a tutor…

Children's worlds are increasingly populated by intelligent technologies. This has raised a number of questions about the ways in which technology can change children's ideas about important concepts, like what it means to be alive or smart. In this study, we examined the impact of experience with intelligent technologies on children's ideas about…

Many students struggle with statistical concepts such as interaction. In an experimental group, participants took a paper-and-pencil test and then were given training to establish equivalent classes containing four different statistical interactions. All participants formed the equivalence classes and showed maintenance when probes contained novel…

The major purpose of this study was 1) to investigate the development of the concept of a unit of measure and the coordination of unit size and the number of units 2) to relate this development to the development of conservation and 3) to determine the role of equivalence and nonequivalence relations in certain conservation and measurement…

A study determined the effect of school organization on pupil attitudes, achievement, conceptual maturity, and classroom behavior. Ten teachers in each of three groups in a midwestern school district were selected and 707 pupils enrolled in their classes comprised the sample. An experimental group was placed in a nongraded form of organization,…