It is well known that many students have tremendous difficulties with applying Gauss's law for purposes of solving quantitative as well as qualitative problems. In this study, it was investigated how understanding of Gauss's law can be facilitated by analyzing the superposition of electric field vectors for increasingly complex geometric…

Analyzing and interpreting data is an important science practice that contributes toward the construction of models from data; yet, there is evidence that students may struggle with making meaning of data. The study reported here focused on characterizing students' approaches to analyzing rate and concentration data in the context of method of…

We investigate the way students' reasoning about evolution can be supported by drawing-based modeling. We modified the drawing-based modeling tool SimSketch to allow for modeling evolutionary processes. In three iterations of development and testing, students in lower secondary education worked on creating an evolutionary model. After each…

The purpose of this study was to elucidate and describe students' thinking when making connections between substitution and elimination reactions and their corresponding reaction coordinate diagrams. Thirty-six students enrolled in organic chemistry II participated in individual, semi-structured interviews. Three major themes were identified that…

This study investigates the relationship between early maternal employment history and children's vocabulary and inductive reasoning ability at age 5, drawing on longitudinal information on 2,200 children from the Growing Up in Scotland data. Prior research rarely addresses dynamics in maternal employment and the methodological ramifications of…

How people see the world, even how they research it, is influenced by beliefs. Some beliefs are conscious and the result of research, or at least amenable to research. Others are largely invisible. They may feel like "common knowledge" (though myth, not knowledge), unrecognized premises that are part of the surrounding culture. As we…

Although hypothesis testing is ubiquitous in data analysis, research suggests it is commonly misunderstood. Simulation-based inference methods have potential to make student thinking visible, thus providing a valuable lens to analyze developing conceptions about inference. This paper identifies difficulties made visible through simulation-based…

An argument in academic writing is an essential element; it is used to convince readers that the writer's opinion or claim can be acceptable. However, this may be problematic for university students or new writers especially when writing in a language other than their first language such as Indonesians who take an international English writing…

Analogical reasoning is essential for transfer by supporting recognition of relational similarity. However, not all analogies are created equal. The source and target can be similar (near), or quite different (far). Previous research suggests that close comparisons facilitate children's relational abstraction. On the other hand, evidence from…

Research in organic chemistry education has revealed that students often rely on rote memorization when learning mechanisms. Not much is known about student productive resources for causal reasoning. To investigate incipient stages of student causal reasoning about single mechanistic steps of organic reactions, we developed a theoretical framework…

An argument in academic writing is an essential element; it is used to convince readers that the writer's opinion or claim can be acceptable. However, this may be problematic for university students or new writers especially when writing in a language other than their first language such as Indonesians who take an international English writing…

The aim of his study was to detect the misconceptions about heredity in secondary school (Middle school) 8th Grade pupils' Science courses. In order to perform a beneficial and useful science education it was necessary. The space of study was 8th grade pupils that the data obtained from research assessed via appreciated statistical methods.As a…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate probabilistic reasoning of seventh-grade students (N=167) studying at randomly selected three middle schools that served low and middle socioeconomic areas in a city of Turkey. "Probabilistic Reasoning Test (PRT)" was developed and used as a data collection tool. In analyzing the data,…

The objective of this study is to use personal analogy as a pre-organizer. The subject of the personal analogy is chosen as minerals. For this purpose, geography teacher candidates were asked the questions, "Which mineral would you like to be? Why?" They explain the properties of the minerals by matching them with their own…

Based on Vygotsky's theory of the interplay of the tool and sign functions of language, this study presents a textual analysis of a corpus of student-authored texts to illuminate aspects of development evidenced through the dialectical tension of tool and sign. Data were drawn from a series of reflective memos I authored during a seminar for new…