This article presents the author's response to Nicola Rollock's critique on the author's paper in which the author has argued that ethnographic data should be more widely used in psychology (Woods 2005, 2007b). Rollock argues that the paper neglects Zak's level of educational achievement, and fails to critically interrogate his teachers' actions…

This poetic-prose piece is my personal ethnic educational history. It challenges the misconception that Cuban students (so-called voluntary minorities) are not oppressed, especially not by their Cuban teachers, and that they thus achieve more academic success than other Latinos. Some may be hiding. Perhaps this work will help to find them.

Teachers and researchers have long recognized that students tend to misunderstand the equal sign as an operator; that is, a signal for "doing something" rather than a relational symbol of equivalence or quantity sameness. Students' equal sign misconception has been researched for more than thirty years (Weaver, 1971, 1973) with little…

This study assessed professional caregivers of persons with Alzheimer disease (AD) and non-caregivers' knowledge about aging and AD. Participants completed modified versions of the Alzheimer Disease Knowledge Test and the multiple-choice version of the Facts on Aging Quiz #1. Overall, knowledge levels about AD and aging were low. Caregivers were…

Plagiarism has become the new piracy. Just as piracy was a few years ago, plagiarism has become the hot, new crime du jour--an act that suggests immorality and often scandal at once. What's more, plagiarism allegations feed into the society's "Candid Camera" mentality--the seemingly insatiable need to uncover wrongdoing. One of the biggest…

The instructional metaphor is an important bridge to understanding, particularly when students are undertaking tasks that are conceptually difficult and outside their previous experience. It is suggested that the limitations of the implicit metaphor of the procedural control languages are the main cause of the problems experienced with delivering…

Young children construct understandings of gender during the preschool years. They accurately apply common gender stereotypes to toys by the time they are three and readily predict their parents' opinions about gender-typical and cross-gender play. This study involved 3- and 5-year-old children in identifying "girl toys" and "boy toys". It also…

Throughout its long history, the conceptual change literature assumed that student "misconceptions" in mechanics have been formed prior to instruction. As an attempt to shed light on conceptual change, this paper examines some of the trends in the literature and argues that misconceptions may be spontaneous rather than preformed, that schema…

As often happens, a lot of physics can come out of a toy. What we found interesting is the observation of the magnetic field produced by different configurations built with GEOMAG[TM]. This toy provides small magnetic bars and steel spheres to play with. Amusing 3-D structures can be built; nevertheless, this possibility is not so obvious. Indeed,…

The study reported here employed a mixed factorial design to experimentally investigate the effects of message format on memory for the source of information. Political messages were presented in 3 types of formats: conventional political ads, news-like political ads, and news stories. Memory for the source of information was measured directly…

We describe what may well be the first course devoted explicitly to the topic of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE). In the course, students examine four central topics (literacy, numeracy, emotion/motivation, and conceptual change) through the perspectives of psychology, neuroscience, genetics, and education. We describe the pedagogical tools we…

In spite of the importance of geological time in evolutionary biology, misconceptions about historical events in the history of life on Earth are common. Glenn (1990) has documented a decline from 1960 to 1989 in the amount of space devoted to the history of life in high school earth science textbooks, but we are aware of no similar study in…

Previous research has demonstrated that judicial instructions on the law are not well understood by jurors tasked with applying the law to the facts of a case. The past research has also shown that jurors are often confused by the instructions used in the sentencing phase of a capital trial. The current research tested the effectiveness of a…

The focus of this paper examines how dual language education (DLE) programs are valuable. The literature shows that children do much more than just thrive in a dual language environment. According to research, children who are bilingual are cognitively, academically, intellectually, socially and verbally more advantaged than their monolingual…

This study has examined the impact of teaching certain basic concepts of astronomy through a predict-observe-explain strategy, which includes three-dimensional (3D) computer modeling and observations on conceptual changes seen in sixth-grade elementary school children (aged 11-13; number of students: 131). A pre- and postastronomy instruction…