When children first hear the term "sound wave" perhaps they might associate it with the way a hand waves or perhaps the squiggly line image on a television monitor when sound recordings are being made. Research suggests that children tend to think sound somehow travels as a discrete package, a fast-moving invisible thing, and not something that…

This article is a response to a study "Gifted or ADHD? The Possibilities of Misdiagnosis," by D. Niall Hartnett, Jason Nelson, and Anne Rinn. A critique of the authors' claim about misdiagnosis of gifted children with ADHD, as well as their experiment and conclusions, is presented. The paper disputes an idea, prevalent in the gifted education…

Analogy in science knew its successes and failures, as illustrated by examples from the eighteenth-century physics. At times, some scientists abstained from using a certain analogy on the ground that it had not yet been demonstrated. Several false discoveries in the 18th and early 19th centuries appeared to support their caution. It is now clear…

Much contemporary library thinking and planning hinges on the belief that the true telos (or mission) of libraries is to merge into the new electronic environment, usually referred to metonymically as "the Internet." In this article, I argue that those who propagate the Internet as the coming information paradise, subsuming and superseding…

Although university-level distance education often sets itself up in contradistinction to conventional educational provision, the thinking most distance educators is framed by a set of un-stated axioms that derive from the conventional system. This axiomatically framed approach to university education at a distance may well blunt the potential for…

D. Hume (1739/1987) argued that causality is not observable. P. W. Cheng claimed to present "a theoretical solution to the problem of causal induction first posed by Hume more than two and a half centuries ago" (p. 398) in the form of the power PC theory (L. R. Novick & P. W. Cheng). This theory claims that people's goal in causal induction is to…

Students can use seed characteristics to discriminate between the different kinds of legumes using taxonomic classification processes of sorting and ranking, followed by construction of taxonomic keys. The application of the Learning Cycle process to taxonomic principles, hierarchical classification, and construction of keys presents the…

Research on language comprehension has focused on the resolution of syntactic ambiguities, and most studies have employed garden-path sentences to determine the system's preferences and to assess its use of nonsyntactic sources information. A topic that has been neglected is how syntactically challenging but essentially unambiguous sentences are…

Students often enter introductory courses lacking a consistent conceptual framework about natural sciences, and after traditional instruction, many experience little change in conceptual understanding. This article analyzes the nature and origin of misconceptions and discusses how they are formed and where they come from. It explains why it is so…

This article responds to the exponential growth in academic textbooks on Western or American Buddhism by arguing that popular trade books written by Buddhist teachers in the West make more effective tools for teaching and learning about the growth of Buddhism in western societies. The use of such texts in the classroom provides students with…

This study is intended to review some of the selected researches carried out on students' understandings of enthalpy and spontaneity. The review puts together the important findings of the researches, summarises the misunderstandings identified so far and the possible sources of these misunderstandings. Therefore, this study would be beneficial…

The most recent attempt by educators to emulate the "sound principles" and methods of business and science is to become data-driven. The leaders in a data-driven school are able to demonstrate how some number, preferably scores on standardized tests, has moved upward as a result of some program they have initiated. Data-driven schools also possess…

Before the author started teaching, he expected his classroom experiences to be similar to what he had seen in teaching movies like "Dangerous Minds." For instance, the first day of school in movie is always portrayed as horrible, while the rest of the year is fairly easy. In reality, the first day is fairly easy, while the rest of the year is…

In an exercise designed to assess the accuracy of the impressions we form of people in online settings, students in a Psychology of the Internet course were asked to interact with two people in two different Internet settings. First, students were asked to interact with "Tom" (a college student) in an asynchronous discussion board setting over the…

Self-injury is intentionally injuring one's body without suicidal intent. However, self-injury is often confused with a suicide attempt. Drawing on her experience as a clinical coordinator at an in-patient program for youth who self-injure, the author provides a background on self-injury, then explores how self-injury differs from suicide and why…