The historical portrait of Frank Parsons in terms of his early years and family life has endured considerable speculation based on limited information. At the 100th anniversary of his death, new information has emerged to refute some of the widely held claims about Parsons and his family life. It is time to move beyond the confines of secondary…

This paper presents a thorough literature review of the analogies used to teach chemical equilibrium. The main objective is to compile all the analogies that have been found to be of service to the teacher and the student. Additionally, we categorize and analyze analogies in relation to the following aspects: representation of the dynamic nature…

Current medical curricula devote scarce time for practical activities on digestive physiology, despite frequent misconceptions about dyspepsia and dysmotility phenomena. Thus, we designed a hands-on activity followed by a small-group discussion on gut motility. Male awake rats were randomly submitted to insulin, control, or hypertonic protocols.…

Use of marijuana and alcohol among current college students (N = 1101) was compared to the perceptions and use of entering freshmen (N = 481) surveyed before the start of classes. Entering freshmen significantly misperceived campus norms for marijuana use, over-estimating that almost every student used in the last 30 days, p less than 0.001.…

This myth that the gifted constitute a single, homogeneous group is addressed by the authors in this article. They respond by saying that there is no single homogeneous group of gifted children and adults, and giftedness is developmental, not fixed at birth. Research in the past few decades has pointed to the ways in which gifts and talents vary,…

Twenty-five years ago, armed with the courage of her convictions and a respectable collection of empirical evidence, the author articulated what she considered to be a compelling argument against the cosmetic use of multiple selection criteria as a guiding principle for identifying children and youth with high potential. To assess the current…

The perceptions young students have of engineers and scientists are often populated with misconceptions and stereotypes. Although the perceptions that young people have of engineers and of scientists have been investigated separately, they have not been systematically compared. The research reported in this paper explores the question "How are…

Electricity is regarded as one of the most challenging topics for students of all ages. Several researchers have suggested that naive misconceptions about electricity stem from a deep incommensurability (Slotta and Chi 2006; Chi 2005) or incompatibility (Chi et al. 1994) between naive and expert knowledge structures. In this paper we argue that…

This paper analyzes President Obama's education policies as they relate to charter schools. The authors first show how his policies continue previous neoconservative and neoliberal educational initiatives that marketize schooling. Arne Duncan's role in charter schools, both in his capacity as former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and in his…

In this essay, Joyce King attempts to interrupt the calculus of human (un)worthiness and to repair the collective cultural amnesia that are legacies of slavery and that make it easy--hegemonically and dysconsciously--for the public to accept myths and media reports, such as those about the depravity of survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans…

In this article, Lindsay Cassedy, Catherine Flaherty and Michael Fordham draw upon their empirical research to assess what understandings their students had of historical interpretations at the end of their compulsory education in history. They found that most students operated with an underlying epistemological model that did not reflect the way…

Purpose: The aim of this small-scale focus group study is to explore the impact the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine has on attitudes towards HPV, cervical cancer and sexual risk taking amongst university students in the UK. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were recruited through advertisements placed on notice boards throughout the…

The structure of two-tier testing is such that the first tier consists of a multiple-choice question and the second tier requires justifications for choices of answers made in the first tier. This study aims to evaluate two-tier tasks in "proportion" in terms of students' capacity to write and select justifications and to examine the effect of…

This paper identifies and discusses misconceptions that students have in making judgments of center and variability when data are presented graphically. An assessment addressing interpreting center and variability in histograms and stem-and-leaf plots was administered to, and follow-up interviews were conducted with, undergraduates enrolled in…

Surprise is of great value for learning, especially in cases where deep-seated preconceptions and assumptions are upset by vivid demonstrations. In this essay, Jonathan Adler explores the ways in which surprise positively affects us and serves as a valuable tool for motivating learning. Adler considers how students' attention is aroused and…