This article discusses and elaborates on how concept mapping as a specific instructional strategy helps students to externalize and transform their understanding of qualitative research; and helps instructors to focus on their students' conceptual understanding of qualitative research. The discussion focuses on concept mapping as a learning…

Learning progressions (LPs) are descriptions of students' growing sophistication in the understanding of a particular construct through a curricular sequence. They are particularly useful for organizing complex constructs for which students do not necessarily connect concepts as taught in different courses. However, they are challenging to…

Is it possible to teach biology without mentioning evolution? The answer is yes, but it is not possible for students to understand biology without the evolutionary context on which the meaning and intellectual value of biological concepts depend. Meaningful learning of evolution requires (1) that the students incorporate new knowledge into a…

A prescription favored in this article calls for the joint use of "learning maps" and "instructional maps." Why then the "Vs." in the title? Simply put, it is a rhetorical device. It calls attention to a key difference between the two. This article explicates the difference. It also informs how alone and in…

M3CA is a model of mastery learning developed in a college classroom, and an acronym for Mastery, Concept Maps, Critical Thinking, Collaboration and Assessment. The M3CA model is a formative model of skill based mastery learning and assessment that produces high levels of academic achievement and empowers students with a feeling of fairness.…

How can young people make use of digital tools and methods to get to grips with the risks and dilemmas arising out of contemporary science, technology and society relations? This chapter addresses the forms of agency enabled through a set of techniques for exploring and visualizing controversial technoscientific issues on the web. Given the…

The role of teacher education is to initiate purposeful conversation regarding specific content, to provide the scaffold for which preservice teachers can begin to understand the subject matter for the purpose of teaching, and to acknowledge gaps in their conceptual knowledge (Grossman and Shoenfeld with Lee 2005). Teacher candidates may enter…

Social studies instruction in upper elementary school (Grades 3-5) is important for building foundational content knowledge to equip students for the secondary school curriculum. Due to numerous school initiatives and demands on the time of teachers, social studies instruction can play second fiddle to reading and mathematics instruction, which…

Physiology is often considered a challenging course for students. It is up to teachers to structure courses and create learning opportunities that will increase the chance of student success. In an undergraduate exercise physiology course, concept maps are assigned to help students actively process and organize information into manageable and…

The seasons are often modeled for students using two spherical objects, one representing the Sun and one representing the Earth. Solely using this model, however, neglects a critical aspect of learning--how students actually see the world. This lesson challenges students to explore seasonal variations as they create and analyze sunrise/sunset…

The Ideational Knowledge Map is an individual's representation of her or his ideational (propositional, declarative, or conceptual) knowledge, and it includes 4 kinds of graphic components: concepts, concept clusters, multi-component links, and texts. The Map has visual and abstract dimensions, whose local, intermediate and global values are…

Until recently, the history of debates about language and thought has been a history of thinking of language in the singular. The purpose of this volume is to reverse this trend and to begin unlocking the mysteries surrounding thinking and speaking in bi- and multilingual speakers. If languages influence the way we think, what happens to those who…

The consideration of threshold concepts is offered in the context of biological education as a theoretical framework that may have utility in the teaching and learning of biology at all levels. Threshold concepts may provide a mechanism to explain the observed punctuated nature of conceptual change. This perspective raises the profile of periods…

The article shows how mind-mapping software can be used to help premedical students learn, apply and relate terminology sharing Greek and Latin roots. Mind-mapping software use a center, branches, and sub-branches to show connections between Greek and Latin roots generated on the mind map. Instruction with the mind-mapping software goes through…

Conceptual change instruction recognizes that students bring personal, or naive, conceptions to the classroom, which they use to explain their world, interpret situations, and create meaning (Driver et al. 2007). But what happens when students' personal conceptions are inconsistent with experts' views of scientific knowledge? Even after direct…