For the past decade, attention has been drawn to a perceived shortage of school leadership applicants. Establishing an accurate perception of the shortage issue, however, is complex. One challenge with the perception of the shortage is the connection made between quality and shortage. The interpretation of quality is often times determined by a…

In an earlier issue of "ACT" (Number 2, 2005), Dr. Rhoda Bernard has presented a call for reframing music teacher education. Based on his experience as a leader of a Swedish longitudinal project about music teacher socialization since the late 1980s, the author discusses some problems with her call. In this article, he elucidates Bernard's use of…

This study investigates the impact of Social Foundations class on the beliefs of elementary and secondary education majors. Over the course of 3 years, 99 students responded to pre-and postsurveys, using a 5-point Likert-type scale to express their level of agreement to 12 statements about instruction, learning, management, teacher training, and…

In a response to comments by Rodney Evans on an earlier "Educational Researcher" (ER) article that the author cowrote with three colleagues at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the author shows that Evans' critique is based largely on a misreading or misrepresentation of their argument, its rationale, and associated…

This paper introduces a theory about the role of language in learning physics. The theory is developed in the context of physics students and physicists talking and writing about the subject of quantum mechanics. We found that physicists' language encodes different varieties of analogical models through the use of grammar and conceptual metaphor.…

Physics is perceived by many students to be a difficult subject, and misconceptions about it are quite common not only among school students but also among undergraduates and pre-service postgraduate science teachers. In teaching the topic of gas pressure to primary student teachers studying in the Bachelor of Education programme at my institute,…

As with many science fiction works, the "Star Trek" franchise uses allegory to address contemporary social issues. Taking a liberal humanistic stance, it addresses race and racism using aliens as allegorical stand-ins for humanity. However, the producers of the "Star Trek" franchise were inadvertently perpetuating the racism they were advocating…

Virtual schooling, or the practice of offering K-12 courses via distance technologies, has rapidly increased in popularity since its beginning in 1994. Although effective interaction with and support for students in these environments requires a unique set of skills and experiences, teacher education programs rarely include teaching and…

Themes from history and philosophy of chemistry have traditionally been absent in chemistry education. This paper targets the problem of demarcationism within the context of chemistry and alchemy. In so doing, it argues that demarcationism can be an appropriate base for bringing the historical and philosophical aspects of the discipline of…

Persistent conceptual bugs exist in how novices, from primary school to college age, program and understand programs. These bugs are not specific to a given programming language but appear to be language-independent. The three different classes of bugs are: (1) parallelism, the assumption that different lines in a program can be active at the same…

This ERIC Digest concerns the constructed knowledge (also called nave knowledge or prior conceptions) held by students and the changes required to alter students' framework to understand and believe the true science concepts involved. This process is called conceptual change. Theoretical framework of conceptual change, what exactly is conceptual…

The purpose of the study is to compare the effectiveness of conceptual change text oriented instruction and traditional instruction on students' understanding of cellular respiration concepts and their attitudes toward biology as a school subject. The sample of this study consisted of 84 eleventh-grade students from the 4 classes of a high school.…

In this study, we explore six students' conceptions of Z[subscript n] in an effort to understand students' conceptions of quotient groups in general. We discovered that there were three different ways our students thought about Z[subscript n], namely as infinite sets, element-set combinations, and representative elements. We explore how…

Conceptual change as the foundation of meaningful learning is discussed and applied to the change in the context of cultural issues among high school students. Cultural issues are envisioned as the repertory of internal cognitive structure of individuals that shapes the foundations of their attitudinal and behavioural functioning. Each one of the…

In recent years science educators have placed increasing emphasis on the importance of understanding student knowledge. The research aimed at exploring student knowledge--misconception research, nature of science studies, and conceptual change research--has proved useful in telling us what concepts students know before and after instruction.…