The "Easterlin paradox" holds that economic growth does not add to the quality-of-life and that this appears in the fact that average happiness in nations has not risen in the last few decades. The latest trend data show otherwise. Average happiness has increased slightly in rich nations and considerably in the few poor nations for which data are…

In recent years, the purpose and methods of Islamic schools have received increased scrutiny from non-Muslim and Muslim leaders as well as the Western media, often leading to negative publicity, criticisms, and statements of official concern. The lack of appreciation of the distinction between radical and ordinary Islamic schools is due to a lack…

The effects of bridging analogies teaching strategy and gender on Turkish high school students' misconceptions in mechanics were investigated. After a pilot study with 67 students in a nearby high school, the researchers' administered the revised Mechanics Misconception Test to 119 high school students as a pretest. Students in the experimental…

This paper provides a framework for examining the role of argumentation and thinking and is consistent with the research on pedagogical and theoretical misconceptions. The focus is on presenting a framework to discuss and illustrate how argumentation is related to social thinking (dialogic reasoning) and conceptual change, and provide common…

The subject knowledge primary teachers have as a basis for their teaching has become a major concern in preservice and inservice teacher education. This paper reports on a study that investigated the science and pedagogical content knowledge of a sample of 42 preservice primary teachers in England. Assignments and questionnaires were used to…

Two related studies are reported about the (lack of) activation of real-world knowledge in elementary school students' understanding and solution of school arithmetic word problems. In the first study a set of word problems was collectively administered to 75 fifth-graders during a typical mathematics lesson. Half of the problems were standard…

Students often hold personal explanations for natural phenomena that are intuitive, alternative to current scientific explanations, and extremely tenacious. This research effort attempted to document and interpret if and how exposure to conceptual change instructional techniques influenced one experienced teacher's conceptions of teaching science…

The linguistic and cultural diversity of America's school population has increased dramatically during the past decade, and is expected to increase even more in the future. But, for many children of immigrant and minority families, U.S. education is not a successful experience. One fourth of African Americans, one third of Hispanics, one half of…

Computer Mediated Conferencing (CMC) courses are attracting students with weak computer communication skills. This document describes a study which examines the outcomes for such students when they enrolled in a CMC course that required high levels of peer interaction. It was anticipated that students with weaker skills would miss important…

A study examined the role that an elaborate analogy can play when high school students learn a concept from a leading science textbook. The elaborate analogy had graphic and text components that integrated and mapped key features from the analogy (a factory) to the target concept (an animal cell). The target features were parts of the cell and, by…

The data for this study were obtained from a sample of 117 biology majors enrolled in an introductory biology course. The Diffusion and Osmosis Diagnostic Test, composed of 12 two-tier items, was administered to the students. Among the major findings are: (1) there was no significant difference in scores of male and female students; (2) math…

Most students enter their first formal science courses with intelligently conceived and sophisticated concepts of science. Some of these may be compatible with the principles of modern science, but others may be incorrect, inadequate, outdated, or otherwise unacceptable. Conceptual frameworks based on intuitive misperceptions, naive inferences,…

Students come to the classroom with theories that they have actively constructed from their everyday experiences. However, some of these theories are incomplete half-truths. Although such misconceptions interfere with new learning, students are often emotionally and intellectually attached to them. Some common mathematical misconceptions involve:…

The purpose of this study was to: (1) investigate the relationship between the learning approaches of high school students, their prior knowledge, and their attitudes toward chemistry, and their performance on a misconceptions test; and (2) describe and analyze the differences between the responses of students of different learning approaches on…

This paper analyzes the misconceptions high school students have about force and suggests that the misunderstanding of Newton's third law is the key to these misconceptions. Clinical interview and diagnostic test data (N=104) indicates that many students have a naive view of force as an acquired or innate property of single objects rather than…