We sometimes struggle with the question of whether our primary goal is for students to recall or understand answers to questions, or for students to do science and improve their "scientific temper". This article describes how an enquiry-based laboratory experiment was carried out in which the stress was on the latter. The students…

Describes the construction of a marshmallow catapult to investigate trajectory concepts. (MKR)

A program developed by a high school freshman is presented that plots unusual graphs on the screen of a TRS-80 computer. The view promoted is that teachers of advanced mathematics should not be surprised if new ways of looking at the subject come from students interacting with computers. (MP)

Discusses research on representational pictures, which share physical resemblance with the concept the picture represents; analogical pictures, which convey a concept; and arbitrary pictures, or highly schematized visuals related logically to the things they represent. The contributions of each type to adult conceptual learning and learning from…

In a high school writing workshop, students frequently would go through multiple essay drafts and conferences with the teacher and fellow students before realizing that their theses were incorrect. A teacher devised the "lexivision" to address this problem. Students used Venn diagrams, graphs, or flow charts to represent concepts in the…

Describes Pathfinder, a microcomputer software package designed to improve students' understanding and skills in interpreting graphs of physical phenomena which was tested in high school math classes. Differences in strategies between various ability levels are reported, and student interactions based on observations and interviews are discussed.…