Reports on the use of a rapid feedback technique designed to provide students an opportunity to monitor their understanding of the material in introductory chemistry. (DDR)

Presents a model that describes how students reconstruct geological transformations over time. Defines the critical factors influencing reconstructive thinking: (1) the transformation scheme, which influences the other diachronic schemes; (2) knowledge of geological processes; and (3) extracognitive factors. (Author/KHR)

Focuses on two secondary students' beliefs and the relationships that emerge from the actions that take place in a classroom. Uses an interpretive approach with the two participating countries, Spain and Costa Rica. Reports that students construct their own theories regarding their role at school and learning and teaching mathematics. (Contains 22…

Explores the effects of Roundhouse diagram construction on a previously low-performing middle school science student's struggles to understand abstract science concepts and principles. Based on a metacognition-based visual learning model, aims to elucidate the process by which Roundhouse diagramming helps learners bootstrap their current…

Reviews Karmiloff-Smith's "Beyond Modularity," suggesting that her work highlights phenomena that seem counter intuitive when regarded from current developmental frameworks, and advocates that understanding them requires more complex perspectives than can be supported by either extreme nativist or domain-general models of cognitive…

Comments on this issue's article by Ward, Vela, and Hass on children's category learning. Suggests that aspects of the authors' methodology may have led them to underestimate holistic processing. (PCB)

Examined students' conceptualizations of learning with 519 Australian, Indonesian, and South African undergraduate and graduate students using the Reflections on Learning Inventory. Analysis did not support a single, clearly defined empirical model of conceptions of learning and associated constructs. Instead, there was consistent evidence that…

Summarizes theoretical and empirical aspects of research that is investigating how best to support conceptual learning and the critical role that representations have in complex scientific and mathematical domains. Explains Law Encoding Diagrams (LEDs) and considers how computers may further enhance the potential benefit of LEDs for conceptual…

The Learning Cycle contains three phases. In the exploration phase, students construct shared understanding of critical characteristics of a concept. The teacher introduces a concept in the concept introduction phase. The application phase introduces activities to extend the concept. Includes five concept activities. (SAH)

The theory of conceptual change is criticized because it focuses only on supposed underlying logical structures and rational process processes, and lacks attention to affective aspects as well as motivational constructs in students' learning science. This is a vast underestimation of the complexity and diversity of one's change of conceptions. The…

The aim of this study is to describe and analyze students' levels of understanding of exponents within the context of procedural and conceptual learning via the conceptual change and prototypes' theory. The study was conducted with 202 secondary school students with the use of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results suggest…

Two studies examined how 3-6-year-olds understand the process of learning. In study 1 examined how children spontaneously talk about learning via a CHILDES language analysis. Talk about the learning process increased between the ages of 3-5. Talk specifically about learning in terms of desire decreased during this period. This suggests the…

A brief survey of the investigations of concept learning in the behavioristic trend in psychology offers some guidelines for clarity in studies of visual concept learning in art. (Author/RK)

Among the 12 documents selected for this annotated bibliography of documents and journal articles in the ERIC database is an expert's argument that the brain's multipath and multimodal capacities are ignored by educators. Another writer fears that the "back-to-basics" movement may have eclipsed the prominence earlier accorded to thinking…

The science learning cycle developed by Robert Karplus and others in the 1960's has been a useful model for many science teachers and researchers. This model stresses the use of structured inquiry to organize knowledge acquisition and problem solving. Recent research in the cognitive science tradition, however, has shown that learning and problem…