Predictive processing (PP) has been repeatedly presented as a unificatory account of perception, action, and cognition. In this paper, we argue that this is premature: As a unifying theory, PP fails to deliver general, simple, homogeneous, and systematic explanations. By examining its current trajectory of development, we conclude that PP remains…

The question of how to foster rooting in science education points towards a double challenge; efforts to "prevent" (further) uprooting and efforts to "promote" rooting/re-rooting. Wolff-Michael Roth's paper discusses the uprooting/rooting pair of concepts, students' feeling of alienation and loss of fundamental sense of the…

In this article I examine three examples of philosophical theories of scientific representation with the aim of assessing which of these is a good candidate for a philosophical theory of scientific representation in science learning. The three candidate theories are Giere's intentional approach, Suárez's inferential approach and Lynch and…

Tacit knowledge, that is knowledge not expressible in words, may play a role in learning science, yet it is difficult to study directly. Intuition and insight, two processes that link the tacit and the explicit, are proposed as a route to investigating tacit knowledge. Intuitions are defined as tacit hunches or feelings that influence thought with…

The "Practical 1" paper combines Schwab's abiding concern, for the nature and quality of educational experience with another abiding concern, for how we think about what we do. The Practical 1 is the first of a set of four "practical" essays. These in turn are the product of his thinking about college education and his…

In this paper, we describe the Scientific Habits of Mind Survey (SHOMS) developed to explore public, science teachers' and scientists' understanding of habits of mind (HoM). The instrument contained 59 items, and captures the seven SHOM identified by Gauld. The SHOM was validated by administration to two cohorts of pre-service science teachers:…

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effectiveness of a metacognitive prompts intervention-science (MPI-S), which is based on the nature of science with 162 eighth-grade science students. It was hypothesised that students exposed to the intervention will show higher levels of content knowledge and knowledge about the nature of…

The purposes of this study were to examine initial content knowledge about properties of air by three cohorts of undergraduate and master's students studying elementary education and to determine forms of reasoning used to explain air phenomena and the effect of an intervention on content knowledge. Subjects were assessed using a 14-question test…

At the start of their first semester, 35 college freshmen were given an interview probing (a) their differentiation of scientists' ideas from evidence, and hypotheses from theories; (b) their understanding of the inherent uncertainty of scientific knowledge; and (c) their reasoning about scientific controversies. The most common responses were in…

The purpose of this study was to examine Edward Lorenz's psychological processes and other environmental aspects in the discovery of chaos at that time. The general concept of chaos is discussed based on relations with previous scientific theories such as Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics. The constraints of discovery in terms of available…

Students frequently misconceive the process of problem-solving, expecting the linear process required for solving an exercise, rather than the convoluted search process required to solve a genuine problem. In this paper we present an activity designed to foster in students realization and appreciation of the nature of the problem-solving process,…

Socioscientific issues encompass social dilemmas with conceptual or technological links to science. The process of resolving these issues is best characterized by informal reasoning which describes the generation and evaluation of positions in response to complex situations. This article presents a critical review of research related to informal…