Suggests activities to elicit and develop children's conceptual understanding of plants. (Author)

Describes an investigation of first-year chemical engineering students' understanding of the mole concept. Finds that a series of activities designed to provide students with visual or experiential points of reference for the mole concept had a strong positive effect on student misconceptions. Contains 16 references. (Author/WRM)

Reports on the findings of a research project involving decimals and students' misconceptions about them. Offers some practical activities that may help children understand decimals better. (ASK)

Explores misconceptions that students hold about sampling techniques on surveys. Highlights students' thinking and instructional implications from two studies that examined upper-elementary students' written and oral explanations as they responded to survey situations. (ASK)

Investigates students' understandings and misconceptions of specific concepts in chemistry by using the quantum model of atoms and molecules. (Contains 20 references.) (YDS)

Examination of senior secondary and tertiary level chemistry students' descriptions of their mental models for chemical bonding revealed prevalent alternative conceptions. Some 20 alternative conceptions were revealed, the most common being belief that continuous ionic or metallic lattices were molecular in nature, and confusion over ionic size…

The ideas of Year I undergraduate biology students about the consequences, causes, and cures of the 'greenhouse effect' was determined using a closed-form questionnaire, and results were compared with a parallel study undertaken nearly 10 years ago. Many of the students in the present survey were unaware of the potential effect of global warming…

Presents a study investigating the effects of peer-assisted learning in upper grade elementary students. Discusses the benefits of this activity for students and teachers. (YDS)

Assessing students' knowledge is complex. Ideally, an assessment measures what students know about a given construct. Too often, however, assessments are complicated by miscommunication. Miscommunication occurs when students misinterpret the intent of the teacher's question and/or the teacher misinterprets the students' answers. This article…

Climate change is one of the most serious global environmental problems and for that reason there has been lately a great interest in educating pupils, the future citizens, about it. Previous research has shown that pupils of all ages and teachers hold many misconceptions and misunderstandings concerning this issue. This paper reports on research…

This descriptive study examined the conceptions and misconceptions students in health professions have regarding older people. The research was conducted in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The findings revealed that students in health professions, as a whole, demonstrated a high degree of stereotypic misconceptions and poor knowledge about aging and older…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of readers' misconceptions on text comprehension. College students with misconceptions in science were asked to read and recall a text that contradicted their misconceptions. Students with no misconceptions served as the control group. Both online (think-aloud, reading times) and offline…

Many undergraduate students have difficulty with the transition to proof-based courses in mathematics. This paper discusses students' beliefs about proof and justification in mathematics just prior to entry into such courses. The paper is based on in-depth interviews with students. The data suggests that some students have beliefs that may in part…

This paper describes a sequence of lessons from two Calculus I classes for teaching the epsilon-delta definition of a limit. In these lessons, the author elicited students' misconceptions and perceptions of this definition through a reading/writing lesson and then used these student ideas to design a lesson aimed at addressing these misconceptions…

This study involved the development and application of a two-tier diagnostic test measuring students' understanding of flowering plant growth and development. The instrument development procedure had three general steps: defining the content boundaries of the test, collecting information on students' misconceptions, and instrument development.…