Data indicate that relatively advanced science-oriented college students can experience serious difficulties in symbolizing certain meaningful relationships with algebraic equations. Reversal errors in formulating equations were seen to stem from two main sources: (1) a syntactic word order matching process and (2) a semantic static comparison…

Errors students typically generate while trying to translate problems into and out of algebraic notation are reviewed. Translation skills and pupil difficulties with them are seen as areas deserving further research. (MP)

Presents evidence for students' qualitative and quantitative difficulties with apparently simple one-dimensional relative-motion problems, students' spontaneous visualization of relative-motion problems, the visualizations facilitating solution of these problems, and students' memories of the online computer simulation used as a framework for…

Some central issues in discussions of creative processes in science are: (1) the mechanism(s) by which hypothesis formation takes place; (2) the sources of new knowledge during hypothesis formation; and (3) the "Eureka" versus steady accumulation (accretion) issue concerning the pace of change during hypothesis formation. This paper…

Analogies and examples from student's experiences are frequently cited as important to teaching conceptual material. This study was conducted in order to explore the effectiveness of an analogical teaching technique, which uses a connected sequence of "bridging" analogies, compared with a more standard teaching-by-example technique. The…