This paper indicates that prospective teachers' familiarity with theoretical models of students' ways of thinking may contribute to their mathematical subject matter knowledge. This study introduces the intuitive rules theory to address the intuitive, "same sides-same angles" solutions that prospective teachers of secondary school mathematics come…

Children's understanding about animal internal structure can be affected by several factors which are poorly understood by teachers. We conducted a large sample study (n=702) of children aged 6-16 years (Grades 1-9) examining children's responses to animals of various size, species and dimensions (2D and 3D objects), and exploring factors which…

In this article we report on a group activity, based on previous work [Hansson & Redfors: 2006b, "Science & Education" (accepted)], in an upper secondary physics class in Sweden. The aim was to engage students in a discussion about which presuppositions that are really necessary for physics. During the activity the students were…

Affirmative action, a controversial topic about which students have many misconceptions, lends itself especially well to a sociological analysis. This paper describes an approach to teaching that: (1) informs students of different affirmative action programs; (2) gives them the opportunity to apply and integrate a variety of concepts and research…

This article describes the process of creating training data for a game developed to promote cross-cultural competence among students studying in a culture different from their own. The process of creating game cards (known as culture assimilators) begins with the collection of reports of intercultural misunderstandings. This phase of data…

The purpose of this phenomenological interview study was to describe how visiting Korean students experience social adjustment and acculturation when attending US middle schools. As a result of phenomenological analysis, the essences of Korean students' social adjustment included: (1) descriptions of power struggles; (2) misconceptions of cultural…

The assessment for learning framework in education has become big business: huge quantities of time, money and energy have been invested in England, Wales and more recently the USA. This article shows that the assessment for learning theory is inefficient and often contradictory. Black and Wiliam's earlier work provides much of the theoretical…

Undergraduate retention is a major concern for universities and first year failure is a significant contributor to the overall statistics for non-progression. This report describes an interview-based investigation of students' perceptions for the reasons underlying their failure in 1st and 2nd semester modules. The most commonly cited reasons were…

This paper describes the development of the CAOS test, designed to measure students' conceptual understanding of important statistical ideas, across three years of revision and testing, content validation, and reliability analysis. Results are reported from a large scale class testing and item responses are compared from pretest to posttest in…

Assessment is an integral and vital part of teaching and learning, providing feedback on progress through the assessment period to both learners and teachers. However, if test items are flawed because of misconceptions held by the question setter, then such test items are invalid as assessment tools. Moreover, such flawed items are also likely to…

In this article, the authors proposed a distillation and matching model (DMM) that describes how evidence-based treatment operations can be conceptualized at a lower order level of analysis than simply by their manuals. Also referred to as the "common elements" approach, this model demonstrates the feasibility of coding and identifying the…

This article reports results from a study focused on teachers' knowledge of students' understanding of core algebraic concepts. In particular, the study examined middle school mathematics teachers' knowledge of students' understanding of the equal sign and variable, and students' success applying their understanding of these concepts. Interview…

Evolution is at the center of the biological sciences and is therefore a required topic for virtually every college biology student. Over the past year, the authors have been building a new simulation software package called EvoBeaker to teach college-level evolutionary biology through simulated experiments. They have built both micro and…

The idea for this project developed in a doctoral seminar taught by Caroline Helton, a white faculty member in voice at the University of Michigan. In a presentation on the performance practice of singing spirituals, Emery Stephens, an African American graduate student in the seminar, concluded by encouraging everyone in the room (all white with…

Most Americans are not very familiar with the first peoples of the Americas. Though some might argue that it is wholly unnecessary to have any knowledge about Native peoples, most would probably agree that some exposure to Native perspectives is a good thing for students. In this article, the author offers his perspective on the most important…