Students are expected to have developed their engineering judgement throughout the course of their studies as part of their accreditation requirements (as stipulated by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology for example), and yet conceptually it is often ill-defined and therefore difficult to teach. This work was carried out in an…

Research reveals that teachers regularly refer to intuitive construals (IC) in formal science education. Only a few studies, however, have investigated why teachers refer to them. Alarmingly, these studies suggest didactic consideration is not the main reason for this. Instead, teachers introduce IC unintentionally or due to a lack of expertise. A…

Genetic variation is historically challenging for undergraduate students to master, potentially due to its grounding in both evolution and genetics. Traditionally, student expertise in genetic variation has been evaluated using Key Concepts. However, Cognitive Construals may add to a more nuanced picture of students' developing expertise. Here, we…

The present study examined adults' understanding of children's early word learning. Undergraduates, non-parents, parents, and Speech-Language Pathologists (N = 535, 74% female, 56% White) completed a survey with 11 word learning principles from the perspective of a preschooler. Questions tested key principles from early word learning research. For…

Natural selection is a central concept throughout biology; however, it is a process frequently misunderstood. Bacterial resistance to antibiotic medications provides a contextual example of the relevance of evolutionary theory and is also commonly misunderstood. While research has shed light on student misconceptions of natural selection, minimal…

The research field of intuitive physics focuses on discrepancies between theoretical and intuitive physical knowledge. Consideration of these discrepancies can help in the teaching of elementary physics. However, evidence shows that theoretical and intuitive physical knowledge may also be congruent. Physics teaching could further benefit from…

This paper reports on one aspect of a wider study that investigated a selection of final year pre-service primary teachers' responses to four probability tasks. The tasks focused on foundational ideas of probability including sample space, independence, variation and expectation. Responses suggested that strongly held intuitions appeared to…

The central goal of this study was to characterize major patterns of reasoning exhibited by college chemistry students when analyzing and interpreting chemical data. Using a case study approach, we investigated how a representative student used chemical models to explain patterns in the data based on structure-property relationships. Our results…

The present study aims at exploring university students' knowledge of sound, especially their understandings of sound phenomena taught in formal science classrooms at junior high school. The participants are 30 university students attending literary courses. They were selected because they were considered to have had few opportunities to formally…

We propose a new model of the factors influencing acceptance of evolutionary theory that highlights a novel variable unexplored in previous studies: the feeling of certainty (FOC). The model is grounded in an emerging understanding of brain function that acknowledges the contributions of intuitive cognitions in making decisions, such as whether or…

Background: Adaptation to learning styles has been proposed to enhance learning. Objective: We hypothesized that learners with sensing learning style would perform better using a problem-first instructional method while intuitive learners would do better using an information-first method. Design: Randomized, controlled, crossover trial. Setting:…

The rapid and accelerating pace of change in physiology and cell biology, along with the easy access to huge amounts of content, have altered the playing field for science students, yet most students are still mainly taught from textbooks. Of necessity, textbooks are usually broad in scope, cover topics much more superficially than do journal…

Given the privileged status claimed for active learning in a variety of domains (visuomotor learning, causal induction, problem solving, education, skill learning), the present study examines whether action-based learning is a necessary, or a sufficient, means of acquiring the relevant skills needed to perform a task typically described as…