This guide provides educators with information and resources for gaining a better understanding of immigration and the immigrant experience and suggests strategies and techniques to meet the educational needs of immigrant students within regular classrooms. The first section provides a brief overview of the history and current status of…

A study investigated whether presenting scientific information about seasonal change in a narrative which is also a refutation text will promote learning of the information more than presenting it in an expository text which is either a considerate refutation text or an inconsiderate non-refutation text. Subjects, 123 seventh grade students and…

Critical pedagogy, an ideology which opposes education as domination, views knowledge and learning as constructed by the student and teacher together. Its goal is personal and social emancipation and empowerment. The purposes of this paper are to (1) indicate problems in science education which can be addressed by teaching science from a critical,…

This document reports the results of a cross-cultural study on children's knowledge about the shape, gravity, movement, and location of the Earth and about the day/night cycle. The subjects of the study were elementary school students from Greece (N=90) and the United States (N=60). The results of the study showed that the children in both samples…

Based on the premise that multiple choice tests can be used as diagnostic tools for teachers in identifying and remedying student misconceptions, this study focused on the development of an instrument for diagnosing secondary students' understanding of photosynthesis and respiration. Information is presented on: (1) procedures of development of…

Designed to address major conceptual problems associated with heat and temperature, this module can be used with high school students or college nonscience majors including those in elementary education. The materials offer guidance to teachers in diagnosing student deficiencies, in creating dissatisfaction with misconceptions, and in providing…

Misconceptions interfere with the formation of new insights and provide a faulty foundation. This causes difficulty in the learning of new materials. Therefore, effective teachers strive to know which misconceptions students have, and then develop a plan by which these suspected misconceptions can be corrected or averted. This paper reports on an…

Three purposes of this study were to: (1) propose some organizing theoretical and observational definitions of the anchor construct; (2) present some initial findings from a diagnostic test designed to uncover anchors for high school physics instruction; and (3) provoke an initial discussion of the new methodological issues that arise in this…

Some interesting work currently being done in science education research is with scientifically misconceived ideas about the causes and mechanisms of natural phenomena. Though not stated explicitly, it can be inferred from the corpus of this misconception research that an assumption of homogeneity among students is made, even where there is…

This paper describes the rationale for, methodology of, and some early results from a longitudinal study on science teachers' knowledge of science. Each of the participants is a university science graduate with a post-graduate university training for secondary school science teaching. The study focuses on two issues: (1) variations that occur in…

Outlines a systematic approach to instructional design and discusses some of the cognitive and instructional issues involved in learning or teaching scientific concepts. Uses the concept of "acceleration" to illustrate the approach. Advocates the use of computers and related information technologies in concept teaching. (ML)

Reports on a study to test the validity of the assumption that a teacher's conception of the nature of science directly influences his/her classroom behavior. Recommends a redirection in science education to promote more adequate conceptions of the nature of science in secondary schools. (TW)

High school students' misunderstandings of the conceptual machine of the BASIC programming language were examined using a screening test and structured interviews to determine their understanding of fundamental concepts such as variables, assignments, loops, flow and control, and tracing and debugging. (MBR)

Discusses the value of studying errors made by students in the process of learning science. Addresses 20 research questions dealing with student learning errors. Attempts to characterize errors made by students and clarify some terms used in error research. (TW)

Contains six abstracts of papers from the National Educational Computing Conference of 1986. Topics of the papers focus on the effects of teacher involvement, computer programs in applied mathematics and physics, microcomputer labs in science, graphing misconceptions, science simulations, and mastery learning with computers. (ML)