This paper focuses on the assessment of student teachers during practicum. The study is contextualised in an Australian pre-service teacher education program in which practicum has been reconceptualised to help bridge the theory-practice gap commonly associated with "front-end loading" programs. Survey and interview data collected from…

College students' misconceptions about probability are common and widespread. These misconceptions impede students' ability to make sound judgments in situations of uncertainty and master fundamental concepts of inferential statistics. In this paper the authors report the results of a study undertaken with the objective of correcting three common…

The paper focuses on analysing grade 12 learner errors and the misconceptions in calculus at a secondary school in Limpopo Province, South Africa. As part of the analysis the paper outlines the nature of mathematics errors and misconceptions. Coding of learners' errors was done through the lens of a typological framework. The analysis showed that…

This is a teaching note on a proposed approach that will correct a common flaw in the way the return-generating process within the APT framework is illustrated in textbooks. The problem can be resolved by dichotomizing the risk factors into two kinds. Based on this approach, the author eliminated the main source of confusion and developed an…

Choosing a college is one of the first important decisions that many young adults undertake. Popular media suggests how students should find an appropriate college based on traditional practices (Hallet, 2008; Kulman, 2007), yet, many aspects of the reality experienced by new kinds of students and colleges is largely ignored in the college choice…

In her ethnographic study of Lao American students at an urban, public high school, Bic Ngo shows how simplistic accounts of these students smooth over unfinished, precarious identities and contested social relations. Exploring the ways that immigrant youth identities are shaped by dominant discourses that simplify and confine their experiences…

In recent years, public charter schools in Connecticut and around the United States have proven that students living in poverty are capable of high achievement. President Obama said in a July 2009 interview, "Charters, which are within the public school system, force the kind of experimentation and innovation that helps to drive excellence in…

We have developed and validated a tool for assessing understanding of a selection of fundamental concepts and basic knowledge in undergraduate introductory molecular and cell biology, focusing on areas in which students often have misconceptions. This multiple-choice Introductory Molecular and Cell Biology Assessment (IMCA) instrument is designed…

How effective are policy interventions to fight crime and how valid is the policy theory that underlies them? This is the twofold research question addressed in this article, which presents an evidence-based evaluation of Dutch social safety policy. By bridging the gap between actual effects and assumed effects, this study seeks to make fuller use…

In addition to meeting National Science Education Standards (NSES) related to the history and nature of science (NOS), reading or hearing about real scientists helps students connect with science emotionally. The authors have even noticed increased student interest in science concepts during history of science discussions. Toward these efforts,…

While it is important to nurture creativity in young children, it is popularly associated more with the arts than the sciences. This paper reports on a series of studies designed to explore teachers' conceptions of creative thinking in primary school science. Study #1 examines pre-service primary teachers' ideas of what constitutes creativity in…

Preservice teachers enrolled in a science content-based course wrote stories that could help their future students understand a science concept. First, participants chose their topic and wrote the story with few guidelines to establish a baseline. In the next part, a different set of students were given a choice of three topics (based on force,…

This paper explores secondary school students' representations of a geological map. Ninety-two high school students (ninth graders--15- to 16-years-old) participated in the survey in Turkey. The findings indicate that students have only a vague idea of how a geological map is constructed, and how the map is affected by the topography. The…

This paper makes a case that decision making (DM) is not social problem solving (SPS) and DM is subordinate and subsumed within SPS. Both terms are defined and distinguished. Confusion between SPS and DM is widespread and has occurred for at least four decades. DM, not SPS, has been established as one of the seven National Health Education…

The aim of this study is to develop conceptual change texts in the teaching of aspects of the nature of science and to introduce the development of texts. The socio-cultural and the subjective aspects were taken into consideration in the conceptual change texts, which are presented in the study. The conceptual change texts were prepared to be used…