This study investigated primary school 5th and 8th graders' understanding and mental models related to the shape of the world and gravity, and how these models reflected the fact and what kind of a change there is from 5th to 8th graders. This research is based on a cross-sectional design. The study was conducted in a low socioeconomic level…

Human participants and recurrent ("connectionist") neural networks were both trained on a categorization system abstractly similar to natural language systems involving irregular ("strong") classes and a default class. Both the humans and the networks exhibited staged learning and a generalization pattern reminiscent of the…

Purpose: The concept of a mental model has been described by theorists from diverse disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to offer a robust definition of an individual mental model for use in organisational management. Design/methodology/approach: The approach adopted involves an interdisciplinary literature review of disciplines, including…

This study reports the result of literature review in regards to learning outcome studies and presents a framework that integrates content types with learning outcomes. Analysis of learning outcome studies between 1992 and 2006 using the ERIC database indicated that most empirical studies have assessed the learning outcome at lower levels of…

This article examines arts participation as a context for youth to develop purpose. Two analyses were conducted of interviews with arts-involved youth to explore the relationship between their arts participation and purpose, which was defined as an "intention to accomplish something that is both meaningful to the self and contributes to the…

In this study, we determined cognitive structures and misconceptions about basic ecological concepts by using "word association" tests on secondary school students, age between 12-14 years. Eighty-nine students participated in this study. Before WAT was generated, basic ecological concepts that take place in the secondary science…

Previous research has consistently found that spontaneous analogical transfer is strongly tied to concrete and contextual similarities between the cases. However, that work has largely failed to acknowledge that the relevant factor in transfer is the similarity between individuals' mental representations of the situations rather than the overt…

This paper explores the methodological and epistemological implications of the relationships between R&D, policy and practice. The proposals towards "evidence-based policy and practice" are analysed with respect to this triangle from three angles: (1) meaning; (2) production; and (3) use of evidence. A comprehensive model of the…

Prior learning assessment (PLA) students enter academia with different types of concepts--some of them have been formally accepted and labeled by academia and others are informally formulated by students via independent and/or experiential learning. The critical goal of PLA practices is to assess an intricate combination of prior learning…

In this paper, we present an exploratory protocol study on the use of different communication channels during design sketching. We focus on how individual designers share their mental models with other designers in a group, and analyse their use of graphical, textual, and verbal communications during concept generation. Our findings suggest that…

Despite the popularity of professional learning communities (PLCs) among researchers, practitioners, and educational policy makers, studies on PLCs differ significantly on the dimensions and capacities used to conceptualize them. Further, the interrelatedness of different dimensions and capacities within PLCs is not often well conceived nor…

Although much done in the name of discipleship and theological education pronounces lofty goals, such as movement from orthodoxy to orthopraxy, in many cases mere doctrinal assent is assumed to reflect deep change. An analysis of discipleship, worldview theory, and certain cognitive approaches to education suggests that worldview-level…

Although Eriksonian theory suggests that adolescents' sense of fidelity is a key component of healthy development, research on this psychosocial construct has been limited. The current study developed an index of youth fidelity, examined the developmental course of this construct, explored the influence of contextual factors on different fidelity…

Children learn to recognise animals from their earliest years through actual sightings in their own observations of their world, but also through second-hand representations in various forms of media. Young learners begin with a template specimen to which they refer when they see another animal that resembles it, naming the animal accordingly.…

The current study aims to determine biology student teachers' cognitive structure on the concept of "living thing" through revealing their conceptual framework. Qualitative research method was applied in this study. The data were collected from 44 biology student teachers. A free word association test was used as a data collection…