The research assessed secondary school students' conceptions of acid-base strengths by using the conceptual change instruction accompanied with concept maps and analogies. These teaching strategies were employed to help them make unfamiliar events familiar. Within a quasi-experimental design, the sample of the study consisted of 73 secondary…

We have developed a metabolic pathways visualization skill test (MPVST) to gain greater insight into our students' abilities to comprehend the visual information presented in metabolic pathways diagrams. The test is able to discriminate students' visualization ability with respect to six specific visualization skills that we identified as key to…

Launching a problem is critical in a problem-based lesson. We investigated teachers' perspectives on the use of a problem that was analogous to the one provided during a launch. Our goal was to identify teachers' underlying assumptions regarding what should constitute a launch as elements of the "practical rationality of mathematics…

Purpose of this research is to state preschool students' mental model about birds by analyzing their drawing. This is a hermeneutical phenomenology research that is based on social constructivist philosophy. Typical case sampling method has used in order to form working group of this research. Working group consisting of 325 children who are in…

Background: A teaching method to improve students' ability to communicate ideas in genetics across the macro-micro levels of organisation was investigated in this study. Purpose: It is designed to help students deconstruct the level of organisation of each tier of a genetic diagram, as the symbols used in such diagrams (i.e. lines and letters) can…

This manuscript presents an exercise that utilizes mathematical software to explore Fourier transforms in the context of model quantum mechanical systems, thus providing a deeper mathematical understanding of relevant information often introduced and treated as a "black-box" in analytical chemistry courses. The exercise is given to…

The article deals with the problems arising within transition from the traditional to the modern educational paradigm. Taking the use of school geography textbooks and teachers' guides as examples the author offers innovative technology for the development of student's personality cognitive experience implemented due to the combination of…

The very nature of algebra concerns the generalization of patterns (Lee 1996). Patterning activities that are geometric in nature can serve as powerful contexts that engage students in algebraic thinking and visually support them in constructing a variety of generalizations and justifications (e.g., Healy and Hoyles 1999; Lannin 2005). In this…

Awareness of one's own strengths and weaknesses during visualisation is often initiated by the imagination -- the faculty for intuitively visualising and modelling an object. Towards exploring the role of metacognitive awareness and imagination in facilitating visualisation in solving a mathematics task, four secondary schools in the North West…

This paper focuses on the use of software developed by the authors that allows the visualization of the motion of a charged particle under the influence of magnetic and electric fields in 3D, at a level suitable for introductory physics courses. The software offers the possibility of studying a great number of physical situations that can…

This paper presents the findings of visual analyses conducted on 369 sketch ideas generated in three 6-3-5 visual brainstorming sessions by a total of 25 participants, following the same design brief. The motivation for the study was an interest in the thematic content of the ideas generated as groups, and the individual representation styles used…

From random interviews of mathematics teachers, the researchers are conscious that students have difficulties in solving problems regarding compound body volume measurement. The researchers found the main factor involved in the difficulties was incomplete spatial concepts. Augmented reality (AR), which is a kind of educational technology, has been…

This paper presents a new theoretical model of creative imagination and its applications in early education. The model sees creative imagination as composed of three inter-related components: vividness of images, their originality, and the level of transformation of imageries. We explore the theoretical and practical consequences of this new…

Students sometimes struggle with visualizing the three-dimensional solids encountered in certain integral problems in a calculus class. We present a project in which students create solids of revolution with clay on a pottery wheel and estimate the volumes of these objects using Riemann sums. In addition to giving students an opportunity for…

Spatial visualization is an essential prerequisite for understanding geological features at all scales, such as the atomic structures of minerals, the geometry of a complex fault system, or the architecture of sedimentary deposits. Undergraduate geoscience majors bring a range of spatial skill levels to upper-level courses. Fortunately, spatial…