James Wandersee asked in 1986: "Can History of Science help science educators anticipate students" misconceptions?. This paper aims to answer the same question by attempting a comparative bibliographical study between the assumptions of early philosophers and the conceptions of children relating to the roles of light and the eye in the process of…

The implications of history and philosophy of chemistry are explored in the context of chemical models. Models and modeling provide the context through which epistemological aspects of chemistry can be promoted. In this work, the development of ideas and models about acids and bases (with emphasis on the Arrhenius, the Bronsted-Lowry, and the…

This paper begins by weighing the term sustainability and considering its meaning in "common culture" terms as people outside the academy might understand it. The first implication is that none of our current behaviour meets the simplest criteria of sustainability. The question "why?" is raised. In responding to this question I suggest that our…

Standard false belief tasks indicate that normally developing children do not fully develop a theory of mind until the age of 4 years and that children with autism have an impaired theory of mind. Recent evidence, however, suggests that children as young as 3 years of age understand that thought bubbles depict mental representations and that these…

This paper presents comments on the article by D. Westen and J. Weinberger, which stated that '...science can be viewed as the history of confirmatory biases" (p. 609). This comment's authors prefer an alternative formulation: The history of science can be viewed as a constant and largely successful struggle to overcome confirmatory biases.…

The persistence of students' misconceptions about motion illustrates the enormous difficulty that teachers face in their attempts to overcome these with traditional physics instruction. An understanding of students' ideas about motion and ways to incorporate them into successful instructional approaches can be obtained from an analysis of…

This paper examines the knowledge and understanding of Hong Kong secondary school students about the composition of unpolluted and polluted air, and the nature and effects of air pollutants. A number of misconceptions are highlighted, including the common belief amongst younger students that oxygen was more common in unpolluted air than nitrogen.…

This study examined 58 sexually abused children referred for clinical psychological services in 1999 in Hong Kong and compared the characteristics and disclosure patterns between those with multiple incidents of abuse and those with single incident. The former group was more likely to have been abused by a family member, took a longer time to…

Objective/Method: The Sexual Abuse of Males Perceptions Scale (SAMPS) is a measure designed to assess an individual's personal and projected social perceptions of myths about the sexual abuse of boys and men. Myths are rigid, stereotypical beliefs that invalidate the experiences and minimize the profound effects of sexual abuse on boys and men.…

The article argues the case for rethinking the way we look at the process of ageing in the work place and the images we use to describe the nature of life for people over 50. Rather than there being more old and frail people in the community, many more people are experiencing an extended middle age, and their numbers are increasing. There are in…

Beyond decoding words and sentences, everyone thinks of a reader as a person who makes particular kinds of intertextual connections, who asks particular kinds of questions of a text, who reads at a particular intellectual distance from the text, who talks about more than the text's meaning and analyzes its nature. The difference in how teachers…

The articles in this major contribution on counseling psychology in schools demonstrate that developmental-contextualism is a metatheoretical framework that is relevant and useful for the work of counseling psychologists. The actual utility of the framework depends on the user's having a clear understanding of its basic constructs and underlying…

A simple circuit problem treating an inductor, resistor and battery in series has uncovered a basic misconception of first-year students. The misconception is not about circuits or electrical properties but concerns rather the meaning and interpretation of the rate of change (instantaneous slope or derivative) of physical quantities. Resolving the…

The author cites research from students' misconceptions of decimal notation that indicates that many students treat decimals as another whole number to the right of the decimal point. This "whole number thinking" leads some students to believe, in the context of comparing decimals, that "longer is larger" (for example, 0.45 is…

Often students are naive or have misconceptions regarding physical geography because of little or no exposure to the discipline; therefore it might be beneficial to relate content to their other experiences and interests. Students have an interest in some type of music, and by tapping into this, students can further explore geographic concepts.…