One potential approach to the authentic assessment of what students know and can do in science is concept mapping. A concept map is a graph consisting of nodes representing concepts and labeled lines denoting the relation between a pair of nodes (concepts). The external concept map constructed by the student is interpreted as representing…

This paper discussed the use of structured observations as a research strategy in two recently completed studies that investigated students thought processes and behaviors in a microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) environment and in other instrument-based laboratory environments. In the first study, students' behaviors and thought processes were…