This article reports on a study exploring a distributed perspective on school leadership through three head teacher case studies conducted in Scottish primary schools. Drawing from a sequence of in-depth, semi-structured and narrative style interviews conducted with each head teacher, as well as from a semi-structured questionnaire and sociometric…

Much research has been done in regards to student programming errors, online education and studio-based learning (SBL) in computer science education. This study furthers this area by bringing together this knowledge and applying it to proactively help students overcome impasses caused by common student programming errors. This project proposes a…

Rational number concepts underpin many topics in advanced mathematics and understanding these concepts is a prerequisite for students' success in high-school level courses. Students with rational number misconceptions that are not diagnosed and remediated in the middle grades are likely to encounter difficulty in high-school mathematics courses.…

This dissertation examines recent claims that post-secondary student writers underperform because they fail to transfer the skills and knowledge taught in first-year composition courses. My analysis of the scholarship on writing transfer and investigation of the conditions of student writing at one private liberal arts college suggest that there…

In this article, we present some mathematical tasks designed to support pre-service teachers (PSTs) in obtaining a broader, more connected understanding of decimal numbers and quantities. We describe classroom scenarios from a content course in which PSTs experienced these cognitively demanding decimal tasks, enacted in ways that maintain high…

"Specific Mathematics Assessment that Reveal Thinking" (abbreviated as "smart tests") provide an on-line formative assessment of middle years students. They aim to put information from research on students' understanding directly into the hands of teachers, by providing quick automated diagnosis of learning for all students in…

This paper reports classroom research dealing with the difficulties encountered by schoolchildren in the acquisition of angle concept. Two obstacles were pointed out in previous studies: the side-length obstacle and the salience of the prototypical right angle. The first aim of the present study is to determine the extent to which a teaching…

This article addresses misconceptions surrounding the Coriolis force and describes how it should be presented as a function within inertial and noninertial frames of reference. Not only does this demonstrate the nature of science as it strives to best interpret the natural world (and presents alternative explanations), but it offers a rich…

Two-dimensional (2D) diagrams are essential in chemistry for conveying and communicating key knowledge about disciplinary phenomena. While experts are adept at identifying, interpreting, and manipulating these representations, novices often are not. Ongoing research efforts in the field suggest that students' effective use of concrete and virtual…

This is an interpretive case study to examine the teaching of an experienced science faculty who had a strong interest in teaching undergraduate and graduate science courses and nature of science specifically. It was interested in how he transformed knowledge from his experience as a scientist and his ideas about nature of science into forms…

This study aimed to investigate the effects of conceptual change texts in teaching concepts in the "People and Management" Unit of a Social Studies Course. The working group of the study was composed of 4th graders in a primary school in Çorum, assigned as control (n = 23) and experimental (n = 23) groups. Non-equivalent control group…

Despite the relevance of nature of science and scientific models in science education, studies reveal that students do not possess adequate views regarding these topics. Bearing in mind that both teachers' views and knowledge strongly influence students' educational experiences, the main scope of this study was to evaluate Portuguese prospective…

Misconceptions of psychological phenomena are widespread and often not easily eliminated--even among students completing college-level psychology courses. As part of a research methods psychology course, students developed public-service-announcement-style posters as part of a psychology myth-debunking campaign and presented these to students…

Background: Studies have shown that students' knowledge of osmosis and diffusion and the concepts associated with these processes is often inaccurate. This is important to address, as these concepts not only provide the foundation for more advanced topics in biology and chemistry, but are also threaded throughout both state and national science…

It is important to structure children's knowledge and arouse their interest in subjects like astronomy and space. Although we now talk of travelling to the moon, space tourism etc., knowledge about astronomy and space is limited and perceptions of these subjects do not reflect scientific reality. Primary level students often have misconceptions…