This paper attempts to address challenges identified by Michael Young and those arising from his writings on 'powerful knowledge' to gain a deeper insight into the relationship between everyday horizontal knowledge and disciplinary vertical knowledge as well as how we can approach it in a way that benefits pedagogy. The attempt includes the move…

Enhancing students' conceptual understanding is one of the primary goals of science education. Existing literature suggests that the degree of knowledge integration among students can reflect their level of conceptual understanding. This study focuses on the concept of friction force, constructing a cognitive structure model of friction force to…

Difficulties in understanding evolution are often rooted in early childhood, arising from naïve assumptions and cognitive biases. However, literature reviews mainly focus on school and university students' understanding of evolution, with only limited comprehensive reviews on children in early childhood aged up to 7 years. This systematic review…

This study investigates the impact of utilizing dynamically linked concrete and abstract representations of objects in modern, virtual electric circuit laboratories on the cognitive evolution and the representational fluency of high school students. The students (N = 27, aged 16-17) were randomly divided into two classes: the first class used a…

A digital instructional game with embedded multimedia was believed not limited to allowing the learner to visualize chemistry concepts while playing but enable them to collect relevant information that connects the understanding of the other. The subject was described as a core science area with multiple macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic…

The aim of the present study was to gain an insight into French young people's conceptual development regarding the greenhouse effect. Because this effect cannot be directly manipulated, we can assume that its conceptualization is mainly shaped through the sharing of information. Eighty French students from Grade Seven through to adulthood…

The purpose of this research was to study primary science students' conceptual development as it related to their understanding of materials and their properties: in particular, to determine how and why some students changed their concepts while others did not. The participants were thirty-two Grade 5 (10-11 year old) students. An instructional…

Geometrical notions and properties occur in real-world problems, thus Geometry has an important place in school Mathematics curricula. Primary school curricula lays the foundation of Geometry knowledge, pupils learn Geometry notions and properties by exploring their environment. Thus it is very important that primary school teachers have a good…

In two experiments autobiographical memories from childhood were recalled to cue words naming common objects, locations, activities and emotions. Participants recalled their earliest specific memory associated with each word and dated their age at the time of the remembered event. A striking and specific finding emerged: age of earliest memory was…

Previous research on children's conceptual and procedural understanding of fractions, and other arithmetic skills, has led to contradictory conclusions. Some research suggests that children learn conceptual knowledge before procedural knowledge, some suggests that they learn procedural knowledge before conceptual knowledge, and other research…

We investigated the relation between children's numerical-magnitude representations and their memory for numbers. Results of three experiments indicated that the more linear children's magnitude representations were, the more closely their memory of the numbers approximated the numbers presented. This relation was present for preschoolers and…

To date, a number of studies have demonstrated the existence of mismatches between children's "implicit" and "explicit" knowledge at certain points in development that become manifest by their gestures and gaze orientation in different problem solving contexts. Stimulated by this research, we used eye movement measurement to…

This paper considers the role of comparison in the development of knowledge. Results show that comparing similar objects makes them appear more similar. Comparing dissimilar objects, on the other hand does not make them appear more similar, and in some circumstances may make them appear less similar. The effect of comparison on similar items was…

This study tested for deep understanding and critical thinking about basic quantum chemical concepts taught at 12th grade (age 17-18). Our aim was to achieve conceptual change in students. A quantitative study was conducted first (n = 125), and following this 23 selected students took part in semi-structured interviews either individually or in…

Three experiments involving 80 infants provide evidence that infants at 2.5 and 4 months represent objects and surfaces that they no longer perceive and that they operate on their representations to derive information about an event they have never perceived. Experiments suggest that cognition develops concurrently with perception and action. (SLD)