This study surveyed 183 college and senior high school students' graph-interpretation competence in scientific and daily contexts. Specifically, whether students' graph interpretation in scientific and daily contexts differed across educational levels was investigated. Furthermore, the questions of whether students' graph interpretation competence…

In this article we present the results of an investigation into semiotic aspects of an introductory differential equations class from two countries. In order to perform a comparative analysis, students in the USA and Tunisia were given common questions on their midterm exams that examined analytical and graphical competencies. Our results indicate…

A social semiotic lens is used to characterise aspects of representational competence for a discipline such as physics, to provide science teachers with a practical suggestion about how student learning might be organised to develop representational competence. We suggest that representational competence for some areas of science can be…

Background: Research studies (e.g., Phakiti, Language Testing 25(2):237-272, 2008a; Phakiti, Language Assessment Quarterly 5(1): 20-42, 2008b; Purpura, Learner strategy use and performance on language tests: a structural equation modeling approach, 1999) conducted on the construct validation of Bachman and Palmer's (1996) strategic competencehas…

Undergraduate biology education reform aims to engage students in scientific practices such as experimental design, experimentation, and data analysis and communication. Graphs are ubiquitous in the biological sciences, and creating effective graphical representations involves quantitative and disciplinary concepts and skills. Past studies…

In the subject matter of functional relationships, a student's ability to translate from one form of representation to another is seen as a central competence. In the course of the HEUREKO project (heuristic work with representations of functional relationships and the diagnosis of mathematical competencies of students), a theoretical competence…

With the growing emphasis on the development of scientific inquiry skills, the display and interpretation of data are becoming increasingly important. Graph interpretation competence is, in fact, essential to understanding today's world and to be scientifically literate. However, graph interpretation is a complex and challenging activity. Graph…

We describe how 1 Algebra I teacher and her 8th-grade students used meta-representational knowledge when generating and evaluating equations to solve word problems. Analyzing data from a sequence of 4 lessons, we found that the teacher and her students used criteria for evaluating equations, in addition to other types of knowledge (e.g., different…

Past research has shown that many scientists, when asked to interpret unfamiliar graphs that have nevertheless been culled from introductory undergraduate courses in their own field, experience problems and cannot give the standard answer accepted in the field. Yet, these same scientists turn out to be highly competent when it comes to graphs from…