This study aimed to elucidate the perceptions and mental models of 5th-grade secondary school pupils about shadows, solar eclipses and lunar eclipses through drawings. A total of 443 pupils studying at public schools in Afyonkarahisar participated in the study. It was conducted as a case study, one of the qualitative research designs. As a data…

Students of various age groups manifest numerous explanations that differ from what is known to be scientifically correct. Misconceptions about the human body are one of the best studied areas of students' understanding of scientific phenomena. To explore misconceptions, researchers have at their disposal various methods which can lead to…

Throughout students' careers in physics, there are some topics that they learn multiple times and in multiple ways, and other topics that are briefly, if at all, discussed. I wanted to have the students think about all of the different physics topics they had learned in, most likely, a new way. Games have been used as a way to learn new physics…

Communicating even fundamental scientific concepts can be challenging. Furthermore, student mental models are often difficult to uncover even by the most talented teacher or researcher. Drawing is a universal process skill widely used by scientists to refine their conceptions about a wide range of topics, communicate ideas, and advance scientific…

Citizens show misunderstandigs about groundwater that hinder making informed decisions about problems like the deterioration of aquifers. Science education should address this, including modelling practices about the aquifer model. Physical models (PM) have been extensively used in geology teaching, but students rarely construct, evaluate or…

Plant nutrition is a complex subject at any educational level therefore, identification of student's ideas regarding this scientific concept is important in order to define the best instructional learning method. In this study, we conduct a cross-age comparison of the conceptual understanding of compulsory students and prospective elementary…

A qualitative pre-/post-test case study was conducted to explore the influence of inquiry-based education in eliciting learners' understanding of the particulate nature of matter in the gaseous phase. Two grade four classes (n=116) were conveniently and purposively sampled from two farm schools in Pretoria, South Africa. Data was collected through…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] Several decades of research have contributed to our understanding of students' reasoning about astronomical phenomena. Some authors have pointed out the difficulty in reading and interpreting images used in school textbooks as factors that may justify the persistence…

In this article I present a study on learners' conceptions in cosmology by situating the results in the context of broader historical and sociocultural themes. Participants were community college students in California from non-dominant cultural and linguistic backgrounds finishing their first semester of astronomy. Data were collected through a…

"Evolution" is an area of the curriculum in which children show great interest and enthusiasm to learn more. They also bring considerable prior (though incomplete) knowledge from their informal "life worlds". Most children have encountered the term "evolution" from an early age and tend to define it in terms of…

Learning fundamental geoscience topics such as plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes requires students to develop a deep understanding of the conceptual models geologists use when describing the structure and dynamics of Earth's interior. Despite the importance of these mental models underlying much of the undergraduate geoscience…

This study explored elementary pre-service teachers' content knowledge for dissolving before and after an instructional intervention over a 15-week science methods course. Pre-service teacher knowledge was examined using pre/post concept maps (Cmaps) and drawings with narrative descriptions. A mixed methods approach was used for both data…

Background: Studies have shown that students' knowledge of osmosis and diffusion and the concepts associated with these processes is often inaccurate. This is important to address, as these concepts not only provide the foundation for more advanced topics in biology and chemistry, but are also threaded throughout both state and national science…

Background and purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate and identify the nature and the interrelatedness of pre-service teachers' misconceptions and scientific concepts for explaining dissolving before, during, and after a 5E learning cycle lesson on dissolving, the intervention. Sample, design, and methods: Guided by Vygotsky's…

Should instructors assume that students possess conceptual knowledge of plate tectonics when they reach a second college geoscience course? Five cohorts in a historical geology course over 5 y--a total of 149 students--completed an in-class assignment in which they drew sketches of plate boundaries with required annotations. Analysis of the…