Mendel and his peas. Goodall and her chimpanzees. Bentley and his snowflakes. Pasteur and his sheep. Not only do these stories intrigue students, but they also demonstrate the trials and tribulations associated with scientific inquiry. Using scientists' biographies piques student interest while providing an added dimension to their understanding…

Gestalt psychologists proposed two distinct learning mechanisms. Associative learning occurs gradually through the repeated co-occurrence of external stimuli or memories. Insight learning occurs suddenly when people discover new relationships within their prior knowledge as a result of reasoning or problem solving processes that re-organize or…

One of the key reasons that multimedia, and particularly hypertext systems, are gaining in importance is that they inspire hopes of optimizing learners' processes of knowledge construction. The present study is concerned with the respective influence of individual learner variables (i.e. particularly domain-specific prior knowledge) on the use of…

A review of the literature in science education shows that most students have difficulties in hypothetico-deductive reasoning. The author's objective in this study was to investigate the abilities of high school teachers and university teachers to understand the difference between the terms "hypothesis" and "prediction" in the…

Discusses the potential that school mathematics has for being a source of exploration and discovery for students and teachers. Provides a process-oriented definition of understanding mathematics. Presents activities in which students construct computer and actual models of polyhedra and make conjectures regarding a medical research application of…