Histograms are adept at revealing the distribution of data values, especially the shape of the distribution and any outlier values. They are included in introductory statistics texts, research methods texts, and in the popular press, yet students often have difficulty interpreting the information conveyed by a histogram. This research identifies…

Concept-focused quiz questions required College Algebra students to write about their understanding. The questions can be viewed in three broad categories: a focus on sense-making, a focus on describing a mathematical object such as a graph or an equation, and a focus on understanding vocabulary. Student responses from 10 classes were analyzed.…

This book draws on applied linguistics and literary studies to offer concrete means of engaging with vernacular language and literature in secondary and college classrooms. The authors embrace a language-as-resource orientation, countering the popular narrative of vernaculars as problems in schools. The book is divided into two parts, with the…

Despite the teaching of biological evolution in the classroom for decades, the learning of concepts related to evolution continue to pose difficulties for students, due to their inability to see the relevance of evolution their everyday experiences. In this study, we report the results from questionnaires composed of twelve multiple-choice items…

This study aims to explore how undergraduate students in mathematics and engineering professions make sense out of graphs representing periodic and repeated but non-periodic motions. In this study, making sense out of graphs means interpreting graphical features and describing a situation that could be represented by them. The data was collected…

This manuscript discusses the common confusion between the terms probability and odds. To emphasize the importance and responsibility of being meticulous in the dissemination of information and knowledge, this manuscript reveals five cases of sources of inaccurate statistical language imbedded in the dissemination of information to the general…

Educators at all levels and in all settings are getting questions these days about the approaching "end of the world" catastrophes supposedly coming in December 2012. This resource guide provides a selection of useful resources for responding to student and public questions in this arena. The latest internet myth to gain traction is the notion…

The positive reception of Buber's philosophy does not fully match Buber's intention in terms of overcoming the problem of the subject-object binary. In other words, a number of authors have remained within the traditional way of thinking by merely replacing the subject and object with Buber's I and You, establishing a more dogmatic normative…

Our first objective was to detect misconceptions about the microscopic nature of sound among senior university students enrolled in different engineering programmes (from chemistry to telecommunications). We sought to determine how these misconceptions are expressed (qualitative aspect) and, only very secondarily, to gain a general idea of the…

Misperceptions of peer substance use have previously been implicated as significant influences on individual use of both alcohol and illicit drugs. However, research on perceived social norms and related interventions are typically limited to binge drinking and marijuana and no empirical studies have explored misperceptions related to "novel…

Is moonlight "silver" or "cold"? In this paper we discuss the interesting combination of factors that contribute to the common descriptions of moonlight. Sunlight is reflected from the lunar surface and red-shifted. When traversing the atmosphere, moonlight is further depleted of short wavelength content by Rayleigh scattering.…

In the face of annual budget deficits, sequestration means automatic, across-the-board spending cuts to all federal agencies. This drastic step allows Congress to limit the size of the budget and gives it the right to make mandatory cuts if the cost of running the government exceeds the cap. On March 1, we all watched as Congress was unable to…

Grammar concepts are among the fundamental concepts of Turkish teaching. Improper teaching of them may cause the rise of certain problems in the teaching of high-level lingual concepts. What is intended herein is to identify if 6th Grade students do encounter misconceptions while learning grammar concepts. Data of the study have been obtained via…

A discussion of some student conceptions of the solid-liquid and liquid-vapor phase transitions is presented. Data from open-ended, short-answer questions were collected from first-semester general chemistry students and then discussed in the context of previous studies. The responses gave insight into the various student conceptions about these…

The purpose of this study was a qualitative analysis of high school students' ideas about life cycle and life forms of the butterfly. For this purpose, open-ended questions and drawing methods were applied to 194 high school students from the ninth to eleventh grades and 14 to 16 years of age in Erzurum, Turkey. Students' drawings were categorised…