Analyzes narrative essays--stories of rock formation--written by pre-service elementary school teachers. Reports startling misconceptions among preservice teachers on pebbles that grow, human involvement in rock formation, and sedimentary rocks forming as puddles as dry up, even though these students had completed a college level course on Earth…

Heather-Jane Robertson's "In Canada" column in the May 1999 "Kappan" demonstrated a wish to discredit an organization for ideological and personal reasons. Comments concerning the homogenization of curriculum and the impetus of the School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP) to standardized curriculum are pure hyperbole.…

Presents activities designed to help children experimentally determine what the dark areas of the moon consist of, and compares primary children's ideas about the moon with those of early scientists. (WRM)

Presents hands-on activities to teach about the causes and consequences of strokes. (YDS)

Musicians hold diverse opinions about the value of scientific inquiry in their field. Although some see music-making as a human behavior that can be studied from, say, a psychological perspective, others maintain that music's subjective and almost magical qualities defy scientific explanation. Even within the field of music education there seems…

Students completing a time calculation exercise identified the International Date Line (IDL) as a conceptual source of confusion and poor performance. From the early 1950s to the present, various geography textbooks have promulgated misstatements involving the occurrence of midnight at the IDL. This condition's persistence and ubiquity manifests a…

In this article, we examine the role of visuospatial cognition in chemistry learning. We review three related kinds of literature: correlational studies of spatial abilities and chemistry learning, students' conceptual errors and difficulties understanding visual representations, and visualization tools that have been designed to help overcome…

Individuals' mental maps of the world are highly misrepresentative of the actual world. Availability in memory partly explains the reasons for this misrepresentation. When asked to place the 50 states in their correct locations, students have difficulty with states not in close proximity to their own because of availability, such that the…

This article addresses misconceptions related to what makes an unfair game fair and describes from a personal perspective the process of discovering for oneself when a particular mathematical method works. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)

This article describes the implementation of an activity designed to confront a common misconception about variable. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

This chapter addresses the contradictions inherent to working at the confluence of human resource development and adult education, as well as the opportunity for transformation in the workplace.

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Program (ACT) scores are the main determinants of college entrance in the USA. It is widely assumed that these tests are predictive of success both during college and in later life, but such views are incorrect. Another widely-held view, held by many educators, is that the SAT and ACT are…

The implementation of a new computer science (CS) curriculum in high schools which includes all the basic elements of traditional CS programs, motivated a research to determine how students conceive the very fundamental notion of efficiency. Since this was the first time that algorithm efficiency was integrated into a high school curriculum, our…

This article presents a statement of the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which was endorsed by member representatives at the association's 2006 annual meeting. In their statement, the Board of Directors revisit the basic principles and discuss the role of academic freedom. Four misconceptions about…

Comments on "Psychotherapy, classism, and the poor: Conspicuous by their absence" by Laura Smith (see record 2005-11834-002). Smith suggested that social psychology theories might explain how a negative attitude toward the poor has reduced the interest of practitioners in poor patients. The current author was impressed by Smith's comments when …