Many universities with a strong research tradition have courses or modules examining the tradition's philosophies and methodologies to prepare their students to undertake research programmes. Recently, however, authors have called for wider debate concerning how these courses are taught and this paper aims to make a contribution to this debate.…

In this study, the effectiveness of concept cartoons in diagnosing and overcoming students' misconceptions related to photosynthesis subject was examined. Firstly, the literature has been thoroughly examined and misconceptions about photosynthesis subject have been listed and then grouped. Concept cartoons related to these groups have been…

Exemplary technology-using teachers achieve meaningful technology use in learner-centered, constructive environments despite the presence of both internal and external barriers. In this study, we discuss factors that enabled teachers to overcome these barriers, as identified by 25 winners of statewide technology teacher awards. In addition, we…

The aim of this article is to reflect on and explore questions of truth and objectivity in the sociology of educational knowledge. It begins by reviewing the problems raised by the social constructivist approaches to knowledge associated with the "new sociology of education" of the I970s. It suggests that they have significant parallels…

The author discusses a line of research examining the acquisition, organization, and use of knowledge associated with conceptual change in which she is engaged at the University of Maryland. It builds on foundational research by scholars in science, mathematics, and reading education as well as in motor learning and physical education pedagogy,…

This paper presents an empirical study of the social situations of first year Chinese students in one UK University. The study used in-depth interviews and constructivist grounded theory to investigate the social situations of 19 foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate students in 2004-05. This exploratory approach was informed by Siu's…

In this study of peer instructors in three Learning in Retirement Programs, the constructivist elements embedded in Mezirow's theory of transformational learning are examined at the theoretical intersections of transformational learning and developmental constructivism, specifically the work of Robert Kegan, resulting in a suggested developmental…

This study extrapolated from Liberman's (2004) calibration model and Kimball and Metcalfe's (2003) conceptualization in order to evaluate students' judgment of learning (JOL) of material presented in either an expository or a constructivist format. The purpose of this study was to determine if students have differing degrees of JOL based on the…

It is difficult for teacher candidates (university preservice teachers) to accept and use an innovative teaching method or strategy if they do not have an opportunity to actually engage in using the method or see it modeled in an early childhood classroom. Teacher candidates used Project Approach to learn about multicultural education. Their own…

This study investigates the impact of Social Foundations class on the beliefs of elementary and secondary education majors. Over the course of 3 years, 99 students responded to pre-and postsurveys, using a 5-point Likert-type scale to express their level of agreement to 12 statements about instruction, learning, management, teacher training, and…

In this qualitative study, that took place in a coeducational government school in Western Australia, I adopt a social-constructivist perspective of learning (Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1986) to examine reading in an elementary classroom. The focus of this article is Nicholas, a grade-7 boy, who was identified as challenged by the literacy…

We explored how students' endorsements of essential (biological and personality) and constructed (socialization and contextual) explanations for gender differences changed from the start to the end of Psychology of Women (POW) classes along with their feminist attitudes. Results from surveys of 120 POW students from three universities indicated…

The concept of academic integrity has been resurrected in both literature and practice in response to a perceived problem of student academic dishonesty. Most specifically, academic integrity advocates suggest changing the student academic culture to normalize academic integrity and reduce occurrences of academic dishonesty. Theories of…

Physics is perceived by many students to be a difficult subject, and misconceptions about it are quite common not only among school students but also among undergraduates and pre-service postgraduate science teachers. In teaching the topic of gas pressure to primary student teachers studying in the Bachelor of Education programme at my institute,…

Text analytics refers to the process of analyzing unstructured data from documented sources, including open-ended surveys, blogs, and other types of web dialog. Text analytics has enveloped the concept of text mining, an analysis approach influenced heavily from data mining. While text mining has been covered extensively in various computer…