Most high school chemistry labs contain detailed procedures on how to perform experiments, collect data, and analyze findings. These step-by-step instructions often eliminate opportunities for inquiry, higher levels of thinking, and the sense of accomplishment students find through independent discovery. For these reasons, two years ago the author…

This article explores analogy as a communicative tool used by parents to relate children's past experiences to unfamiliar concepts. Two studies explored how similarity comparisons and relational analogies were used in parent-child conversations about science topics. In Study 1, 98 family groups including 4- to 9-year-olds explored two science…

This paper tests the utility of a new sociocognitive frame for analysing the development of teachers' knowledge--the knowledge integration perspective (Linn, Eylon, & Davis, in press; Linn & Hsi, 2000). In doing so, the paper describes one prospective elementary teacher's developing knowledge and highlights its complexity. The prospective teacher…

We report on a study of what happened when we recycled a conceptual examination question in a first-year university physics course. The question, which was used for three consecutive years, asked about an astronaut's experience of weighing in an orbiting space-craft. The original intention was to use a phenomenographic approach to look for…

Although electromagnetism is an important component of upper secondary school physics syllabuses in many countries, there has been relatively little research on students' understanding of the topic. A written test consisting of 16 diagnostic questions was developed and used to survey the understanding of electromagnetism of upper secondary school…

A study was made of the ability of a population of high-school physics teachers to define physics concepts and of their views regarding the importance of such definitions. It was found possible to arrange the definitions accumulated in categories, and the classification so obtained was consonant with that of the philosophy of science. Although the…

This descriptive study provides a comparison of existing high school marine science curricula and instructional practices used by nine teachers across seven schools districts in Florida and their students' level of scientific literacy, as defined by the national science standards and benchmarks. To measure understandings of science concepts and…

This study compared the use of paper/pencil and computer tools for creating concept maps. Participants were 52 students in two combined 9th/10th grade biology classes. An independent measures research design was used. There were two treatment groups: computer and paper/pencil. The computer group created concept maps using Inspiration software…

The paper is an extended work from a previous study on Taiwanese and German students' conceptions of the universe (Liu, 2005). The study revealed that students discuss astronomical events and entities based on a mental model of universe and their models of the universe seem to have similar underlying principles with historical ones. In present…

Previous research has shown that students' existing conceptions are critical to subsequent learning because there is interaction between the new knowledge that the students encounter and their existing knowledge from previous lessons. Taber (1999a) found A-level students in the UK had difficulty in understanding the principles determining the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the 9th-grade students' understandings of the nature of scientific knowledge. The study also aimed to investigate the differences in students' understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge by gender, and school types. A total of 575 ninth grade students from four different school types (General…

Objective: Eating disorders, including obesity, are a major public health problem today. Throughout history, body image has been determined by various factors, including politics and media. Exposure to mass media (television, movies, magazines, Internet) is correlated with obesity and negative body image, which may lead to disordered eating. The…

This article argues that an important source of the difficulties posed by particular concepts and theories is the narrow range of "types of causal models" with which most learners are familiar. Most learners are familiar with relatively simple styles of causal models, but many concepts and theories in science depend on styles…

The aim of this research was to evaluate and analyse second-year industrial engineering and chemical engineering students prior knowledge of conceptual aspects of "circuit theory". Specifically, we focused on the basic concepts of electric potential and current intensity and on the fundamental relationship between them as expressed by Ohm's law.…

One consequence of the advancing globalization and technological dependence of society is that people outside professional science are finding that issues of concern to them have a science dimension. I consider how school science education can support engagement with scientific information. I contend that teaching about the epistemology of science…