Background: Limited research has investigated the relationship between individuals' perceptions of their weight status and their physical self-concept. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the accuracy of college students' Body Mass Index (BMI) scores (i.e. based on actual and self-reported data), and whether students' physical…

Chemistry is a subject area that is difficult to understand for some students as it contains abstract concepts, such as mole, molecule and particle. The mole concept is one of the most important topics in which students have difficulty in understanding. There are many studies in the literature on the mole concept. Students who do not fully…

This study aimed at identifying prospective chemistry teachers' misconceptions of colligative properties. In order to fulfill this aim, a diagnostic test composed of four open-ended questions was used. The test was administered to seventy-eight prospective chemistry teachers just before qualifying to teaching in secondary schools. Nine different…

This investigation focused on the effects of a treatment package including multiple exemplar training, time delay, and a self-directed learning prompt (KWHL chart) on students' ability to complete an inquiry lesson independently and generalize to untrained materials. Three middle school students with moderate intellectual disabilities learned to…

This study explored the development of a community of learners through a professional development program to improve teachers' views of nature of science (NOS) and teaching practice. The "Views of Nature of Science" questionnaire and interviews were used to assess teachers' conceptions of NOS three times over the course of the study. Notes and…

This paper presents an epistemological analysis of typical didactical activities noted in early-years science lessons, which was carried out in an attempt to diagnose the extent to which the teaching practices adopted by early-years educators are successful in supporting young children's understanding in science. The analysis of didactical…

Unmotivated, underachieving students pose a huge challenge for teachers. One way to motivate and stimulate student interest in a topic is to use humor. Humor can help students make new connections in learning and improves retention of information (Garner 2006). In this article, the authors describe how they integrated art and literature with…

Science is a social process--one that involves particular ways of talking, reasoning, observing, analyzing, and writing, which often have meaning only when shared within the scientific community. Discussions are one of the best ways to help students learn to "talk science" and construct understanding in a social context. Since inquiry is an…

The Physics First movement--teaching a true physics course to ninth-grade students--is gaining popularity in high schools. There are several different rhetorical arguments for and against this movement, and it is quite controversial in physics education. However, there is no actual evidence to assess the success, or failure, of this substantial…

When teachers or students assess the quality of ideas in science classes, they do so mostly based on "textbook correctness"; ideas are good to the extent they align with or lead to the content as presented in the textbook or curriculum. Such appeals to authority are at odds with the values and practices within the disciplines of science. There has…

The objective of this introduction to Colombeau algebras of generalized functions (in which distributions can be freely multiplied) is to explain in elementary terms the essential concepts necessary for their application to basic nonlinear problems in classical physics. Examples are given in hydrodynamics and electrodynamics. The problem of the…

This paper describes a teaching method that allows for the fast and early detection of students' conceptions, misconceptions and their development. The empirical study of two examples where the method was applied is reported. The prerequisites for the efficient use of the method are discussed and results of the pilot study of its effectiveness are…

School science systems tend to emphasize teaching and learning about achievements of science (such as laws and theories) at the expense of providing students with opportunities to develop realistic conceptions about science and science inquiry and expertise they could use to conduct their own science inquiry projects. Among reasons for such an…

The researchers investigated the comparative effects of individually-constructed and collaboratively-constructed computer-based concept mapping on middle school science concept learning. One hundred and sixty one students completed the entire study. Using prior science performance scores to assure equivalence of student achievement across groups,…

We present an immersive virtual reality (VR) application for physics education. It utilizes a recent physics engine developed for the PC gaming market to simulate physical experiments correctly and accurately. Students are enabled to actively build their own experiments and study them. A variety of tools are provided to analyze forces, mass, paths…