To engage meaningfully with scientific models, undergraduate students must come to understand what counts as a scientific model and why. To gain a sense of the characteristics that undergraduate chemistry students ascribe to scientific models, we analyzed survey data that address students' ideas about both model criteria in general and criteria…

Many students encounter difficulties in science and mathematics. Earlier research suggested that although intuitions are often needed to gain new ideas and concepts and to solve problems in science and mathematics, some of students' difficulties could stem from the interference of intuitive reasoning. The literature suggests that overcoming…

Visualising subsurface processes in hydrogeology and building intuition for how these processes are controlled by changes in forcing is hard for many undergraduate students. While numerical modelling is one way to help undergraduate students explore outcomes of multiple scenarios, many codes are not user-friendly with respect to defining domains,…

Investigated children's conceptualization of scientific phenomena and intuitive methods learned from their everyday experiences. Explores the nature of tinkering within the context of electricity. Presents a model of tinkering that provides a conceptual framework for the interpretation of tinkering as one of the methods students use to make sense…