The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of a sociocognitive teaching strategy on young children's understanding of light. It explores their understanding of the concept of light as an entity that is transmitted independently of the light source and the final receiver. The study was conducted in three phases: pretest, teaching…

Discusses the process of the construction of entities following a social semiotic approach that enables the use of new analytical tools and describes the rhetoric used in construction. Based on an analysis of the historical formation of the notion of cells by scientists, and analysis of a lesson on the microscopic observation of onion cells.…

Differences in the status of ontological categories on the concept maps of secondary-, undergraduate- and graduate-level chemistry students were analyzed with the "Pathfinder" scaling algorithm and multidimensional scaling. Results indicate differences among groups in the structural significance of abstract process-related nodes and…

Fourth-year university students (n=12) in a secondary-science-education degree program in Singapore were interviewed after demonstrations of five familiar chemical reactions. The majority of interviewees used perceptually-dominated rather than conceptually-dominated thinking and were unable to use scientific concepts consistently across the five…

Addresses the implementation and evaluation of a constructivist course and extends the argument toward the induction of teachers into critical constructivism through their own action-research projects. Data is taken from a single case study illustrating the changes in the professional life and reflective practice of one teacher in Brazil. (AIM)