A refutation text is designed to promote conceptual change by explicitly acknowledging commonly held misconceptions about a topic, directly refuting them, and providing an accurate explanation. In this study, we determined the impact of different types of refutation texts on adolescent readers' conceptual change learning in science. Specifically,…

This paper explores secondary school students' representations of a geological map. Ninety-two high school students (ninth graders--15- to 16-years-old) participated in the survey in Turkey. The findings indicate that students have only a vague idea of how a geological map is constructed, and how the map is affected by the topography. The…

Examines relationships between factors affecting high school students' (n=142) ability to acquire meaningful understanding of specific biological concepts. Assessment using mental modeling techniques showed a significant correlation between students' meaningful learning orientation and their understanding of a topic. Suggests that perhaps much…