Dealing with multiple external representations (MERs) in science education is the key to students' understanding of science communication and becoming scientifically literate. It is generally accepted that learning scientific concepts, processes, and principles requires understanding and interacting with MERs. Science can be understood as a…

We used the Rule Space Model, a cognitive diagnostic model, to measure the learning progression for thermochemistry for senior high school students. We extracted five attributes and proposed their hierarchical relationships to model the construct of thermochemistry at four levels using a hypothesized learning progression. For this study, we…

A non-experimental descriptive and correlational design was used to examine the "notion of the nature of scientific model, atom achievement and correlation between the two" held by a total sample of 76 prospective science teachers. "Students' Understanding of Models in Science" scale was utilized to evaluate the views of the…

Despite the relevance of nature of science and scientific models in science education, studies reveal that students do not possess adequate views regarding these topics. Bearing in mind that both teachers' views and knowledge strongly influence students' educational experiences, the main scope of this study was to evaluate Portuguese prospective…

G. T. Fechner (1860/1966) famously described two kinds of psychophysics: "Outer psychophysics" captures the black box relationship between sensory inputs and perceptual magnitudes, whereas "inner psychophysics" contains the neural transformations that Fechner's outer psychophysics elided. The relationship between the two has never been clear.…

Classroom activities that include the process of model building, in which students build simplified physical representations of a system, have the potential to help students make meaningful connections between physics and the real world. We describe a lesson designed with this intent for an introductory college classroom that engages students in…