The purpose of this study was to determine the state of secondary school students? cognitive structures about argument and related concepts and to reveal the change in their cognitive structures regarding these concepts after the implementation of the argumentation-oriented approach in science lessons. This study was conducted in Grade 6, 7, 8…

This study aims to determine the changes in the cognitive structures of the 35 participants after ecology-based nature education in Bursa Uludag and its vicinity. This study used a single group pretest-posttest experimental mode where the data was collected by a word association test. It included the key concepts of nature, national parks,…

The present research approached a problem which has a twofold aspect: the concept of angle and the techniques needed to represent how pupils construct that concept in their cognitive structure during their years in school. In order to access the knowledge of the concept of angle, we used the pathfinder associative networks. This technique provided…

Recent studies show that a new strategy called differential-associative processing is effective for learning related concepts; however, our knowledge about differential-associative processing is still limited. Therefore the goals of the present study are to assess the duration of knowledge that is acquired from using differential-associative…

An important goal of history education is the development of a chronological frame of reference that can be used to interpret and date historical images and documents. Despite the importance of this contextualization goal, little is known about the knowledge and strategies that allow students to situate information historically. Two studies were…

For this project I worked with twelve of my fourth grade students from a local school in the southwestern part of Stokes County, North Carolina on increasing their vocabulary skills through the development and implementation of seven vocabulary strategies. During the Literature Review I came across the following seven strategies: Prediction;…

In the present study, we have applied a word association procedure for assessing conceptual change in science education, leaning on the presuppositions of the theory of social representations. The proposed method was applied both before and after a university population ecology course. Our results have shown that the teaching procedure can change…

Explains techniques used to help students comprehend concepts mentioned in their reading materials. (SW)

In our concern to improve the quality of reading, we have neglected vocabulary development; in our zeal to teach children to pronounce words, we have neglected teaching them word meanings. Vocabulary can be developed by using all the communication processes: reading, writing, speaking, listening, visualizing, and observing; and vocabulary deserves…

The development of the associative structure of physics concepts as a result of the content presented to the learner and the relationship between associative structure and academic achievement was investigated using a treatment and a control group. Assessment of associative structure may allow insight into a learner's progress which complements…

This study of college undergraduates had two purposes: (1) to determine whether cognitive structure, as assessed by psychometric measures of concept interrelatedness, can be developed; and (2) to apply those measures to a learning situation that has produced a nonspecific transfer effect--the facilitative effect of concrete examples on learning…

The contributions of psychology, theoretically and experimentally, to university teaching are examined from the perspective of educational epistemology. The most basic theoretical contribution that psychology has made to cognitive learning has been the delineation of a unit of thinking, the concept, which acts as an organizer of experience. The…

The meaning of a word often cannot be formulated by conscious rules, because it is unconscious. Evidence on the verb "break" demonstrates this. The consequence for teaching is that teachers cannot supply meanings in words, but should present a wide range of uses of a word, so that students can intuit the unconscious generalization. (Author)

Seven investigations of modeling as a teaching technique are reviewed in this paper. Children in the individual projects varied, but included Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans from the kindergarten, and second, third and fifth grades. Modeling effects were examined in the following areas of teaching concern: (1) concept formation, transfer and…