Explores why students fail to learn from teacher demonstrations in a physics course. Reports that six dimensions may have prevented student learning, including lack of a theoretical framework to separate signals from noise, interference of discourses learned in other contexts, interference from other demonstrations and images, and problems in…

Reviews existing literature on gestures and teaching in anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and education and, in the context of several concrete analyses of gesture use, articulates some focal questions relevant to educational research on knowing, learning, and teaching. (SLD)

Presents a model of collective teaching and learning as a way to build deep learning of science concepts while learning about alternative ways to teach the same subject matter. Articulates coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing in terms of activity theory and the associated first-person research methodology that has been developed as a method for…

Studied analogy generation and development and analogical reasoning with 25 German tenth graders in a physics class. Results show the advantages and disadvantages of using analogies in promoting conceptual change and as a teaching technique. (SLD)

Inscriptions are central to the practice of science. Previous studies showed, however, that preservice teachers even those with undergraduate degrees in science, generally do not spontaneously produce inscriptions that economically summarize large amounts of data. This study was designed to investigate the production of inscription while a group…

Why do the designers of environmental education do what they do towards the environment through education? More importantly, how do they account for their design decisions (plans and actions)? Using the theoretical and methodological framework of discourse analysis, we analyse environmental education designers' discourse in terms of the discursive…

Describes a case study of an expert teacher's questioning strategies during an open-inquiry engineering curriculum in a grade four and five classroom. Analysis provides evidence for the complexity of questioning that is characterized by the interactions of context and content of, and response and reactions to, questions. Contains 45 references.…

Argues that there are some fundamental, heretofore neglected, ways in which newcomers come to perceive and talk about natural phenomena. Explores the connection between worldmaking and how a hands-on science approach to science education facilitates the emerging communicative patterns. (Contains 60 references.) (Author/YDS)

Investigates how computers and modeling software contributed to students' interactions and learning in a physics course. Results indicate that while computer environments have some potential as learning tools, they also limit interactions in significant ways, rendering them less than ideal for everyday classroom use. Contains 60 references.…

Photographs are a major aspect of high school science textbooks, which dominate classroom approaches to teaching and learning. It is thus surprising that the function of photographs and their relation to captions and texts have not been the topic of analysis. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence, function, and structure of…

This book seeks to improve the way science is taught in the elementary school. It suggests that there are three main contradictions that make it difficult for teachers and students to engage in meaningful activities from which understandings result. The central issues in this book are framed in terms of three dichotomies that lead to tensions…

Used the experiences of three preservice teachers and the experiences of the researchers to characterize the gap between theory and prescriptions for teaching and every day practice. Illustrates how P. Bourdieu's notion of "habitus," a set of dispositions, accounts for appropriate actions in situations where there is no time for…

In coteaching, two or more teachers take collective responsibility for enacting a curriculum together with their students. Past research provided some indication that in the course of coteaching, not only the teaching practices of the partners become increasingly alike but also do unconsciously produced ways of moving about the classroom, hand…

The authors describe an evolving theoretical framework that has been called one of the best kept secrets of academia: cultural-historical activity theory, the result of proposals Lev Vygotsky first articulated but that his students and followers substantially developed to constitute much expanded forms in its second and third generations. Besides…

Illustrates how teachers designed new science learning environments based on research readings from science and technology studies and studied teaching and learning within these environments. Examples of students' science-related activities include videotaped laboratory activities, taped interviews, and student-produced artifacts collected over…