In this study, it was tried to determine teaching activities that elementary preservice mathematics teachers exhibited in a micro teaching session. Preservice teachers are required to prepare and later present a sample micro teaching session. First of all, they were advised to freely select a topic (or an attainment) of their own intention within…

Along-standing energy lab involves dropping bouncy balls and measuring their rebound heights on successive bounces. The lab demonstrates a situation in which the mechanical energy of a system is not conserved. Although students enjoyed the lab, the author wanted to deepen their thinking about energy, including the connections to motion, with a new…

Energy and matter are fundamental, yet challenging concepts in middle school chemistry due to their abstract, unobservable nature. Although it is important for science teachers to elicit a range of students' ideas to design and revise their instruction, capturing such varied ideas using traditional assessments consisting of multiple-choice items…

Recently, theorists have raised concerns that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has become "a stale metaphor" that disregards diversity and equity, offers little to help teachers address students' misconceptions, and portrays knowledge as "in the head" versus in practice. We refute these notions using grounded theory to…

Metanarratives--stories that are told and retold over time, so that they become the story--have proven instrumental in cultivating conceptions of the Founders as invariably honest, brave, and ethical. A prime example is the tale of George Washington confessing that he chopped down the cherry tree. While this narrative crafted an image of…

Concept inventory (CI) tests are typically used to measure students' general knowledge before and after instruction. We find issue with the current format of these tests, which some researchers claim, measure students' misconceptions, since the answers choices given to students do not consider their prior knowledge. We particularly analyze Force…

This study examined whether children 4- and 5-years-old (N = 156) can revise a physical science misconception from different types of picture books. A realistic fiction book and informational book with identical images matched in word count and reading difficulty level were compared to a control book about plants. In the pretest and posttest,…

This article is concerned with tensions that teachers who are studying for a graduate degree in mathematics education experience when conducting a research project. Specifically, we focused on the tensions that emerge in situations where teacher-researchers encounter the mathematical misconceptions and difficulties of their interviewees. The…

After seeing several reports in newspapers making claims about the cause of death after children had swallowed button batteries, a team of students decided to try to establish which (if any) claims were true. The findings were reported in the Schools Exhibition at the ASE Annual Conference 2018 in Liverpool and are shared in detail here. (A…

The process of learning includes not only success in developing knowledge, skills, and abilities but also mistakes and errors that impede such success. In any domain of learning, instructors will have developed a sense of the typical errors learners make; however, there has been no systematic investigation and documentation of predictable…

The inspection of mistakes can play a powerful role in an individual's learning process (Boaler 2015). The purpose of this article is to support the reader in selecting mistakes that can be leveraged to benefit the learning of all students. Specifically, the authors focus on "which" and "why": "which" mistakes to…

The concept of energy is of central significance, as it is a core disciplinary idea in chemistry and a cross-cutting concept in the sciences. This study sought to investigate student understanding of energetics and associated thermodynamic functions in chemical reactions and processes across a sample of introductory-level undergraduate chemistry…

Aya Matsuda is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English at Arizona State University, Tempe, USA. Her research interests include World Englishes (WE), the use of English as an international language (EIL), and the pedagogical implications of the global spread of English. She has published widely in various books and…

This is an official document of the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD), of which Council for Learning Disabilities is a long-standing, active member. With this position paper, NJCLD addresses points of agreement in the field, common misperceptions, and unresolved issues in scholarship and practice, and makes recommendations…

Education is the main vehicle for empowering adults, and can contribute to community wellbeing. However, regarding mature adults (MAs) (over 45 years old), age has been identified in various studies as a significant barrier to accessing educational activities. This paper focuses on MAs' motivations to learn through an exploratory survey undertaken…