This dissertation examines the thesis that implicit learning plays a role in learning about scientific phenomena, and subsequently, in conceptual change. Decades of research in learning science demonstrate that a primary challenge of science education is overcoming prior, naive knowledge of natural phenomena in order to gain scientific…

This study focused on Robert Gagne's method for curricular development, which consists of structuring a knowledge domain into a learning hierarchy. Two methods of generating learning hierarchies and two different sequencings of these hierarchies were compared and their effects were measured. Four programmed texts were developed from two different…

Study indicates that: "Verbal instruction could be employed to teach manual performance skills not only in science but in other subject areas and in industry as well." (Author)