Misconceptions about competency-based assessment in National Vocational Qualifications include the following: they focus only on workplace performance; they are appropriate only at vocational-technical, not higher/professional levels; they are concerned only with practical skills; and they do not encourage further development. Case study of…

Introduces the Workshop Biology Project which is based on conceptual change by confronting students' conceptions and inquiry based science context. (Contains 24 references.) (Author/YDS)

Discusses students' misconceptions on evaporation of water considering the errors in geoscience textbooks. (YDS)

Examined the impact of a teaching intervention on preschoolers' concepts of the day/night cycle. Found that most children readily accepted that the sun and earth are separate spherical objects, but fewer attributed the day/night cycle to rotation of the earth on its axis. Most were puzzled by simultaneous movements of the earth around the sun and…

Reasonable-sounding essays in the September 1999 "Kappan," advocating expansion of religion's influence in public education are fundamentally flawed by unstated assumptions and selective historical references. The wall of church/state separation is probably the best way to ensure religious freedom and protect both secular and religious…

One of the biggest hurdles in teaching statistics is convincing students that the area under curves has anything to do with all the samples, histograms, and various other indicators to which they have been exposed. Presents two examples to illustrate this phenomenon. (ASK)

Presents a joint work of mathematics and science educators that suggests that many responses that literature describes as alternative conceptions are interpreted as if they evolved from a small number of intuitive rules. Demonstrates the explanatory and predictive power of these intuitive rules. (Contains 36 references.) (Author/ASK)

How can a widely acclaimed benefit of music study (improved spatial/temporal reasoning) be incorporated without overwhelming musical values? By focusing on musical learning goals stipulated in the standards and graciously including some ancillary purposes, music educators can protect professional integrity while comfortably promoting beneficial…

Discusses copyright laws and presents a history of copyright. Outlines a four-step process of licensing a show. Considers different myths of copyright. Lists seven points in detail describing what "you can and cannot do" regarding copyright laws. Presents a list of 24 resources for copyright and licensing information. Discusses the consequences of…

Examined the use of metaphors in lectures at a British university, and overseas students' interpretations of them. Found that metaphors were very prevalent and overseas students' interpretations differed significantly from lecturers'. The students often misunderstood the main points of the lecture and misinterpreted the lecturer's stance toward…

Discusses issues regarding evolution instruction in public schools and focuses on misconceptions such as the use of the word "belief", lack of evidence for theories of evolution, and the belief that teaching evolution as fact is proselytizing students. Presents teaching approaches to the topic of evolution. (Contains 33 references.) (YDS)

Many pupils will be familiar with the ideas in "2001: A Space Odyssey" but few will have considered the physics involved. Simple calculations show that some of the effects depicted in the Space Station and on the Discovery are plausible but others would be impractical. (Author/ASK)

Van Breukelen offers a promising method for modeling both response speed and response accuracy. However, the underlying conception of both dependent measures is somewhat flawed, leading the author to conclude that the approach possesses limitations that, under revised assumptions, may not hold. The central misconception, and a set of related…

A sample of 134 sixth-grade students who were using the Connected Mathematics curriculum were administered an open-ended item entitled, Vet Club (Balanced Assessment, 2000). This paper explores the role of misconceptions and naive conceptions in the acquisition of statistical thinking for middle grades students. Students exhibited misconceptions…

The general perception is that high school teaching of mathematics in South Africa tends to be fairly procedural and that students that enter university are better equipped to deal with procedural problems rather than conceptual. This study compares the conceptual and procedural skills of first-year calculus students in life sciences. Also…