Defining "force" in everyday terms is not a simple matter. Discusses experience with various examples and shows that it is useful to examine whether students have indeed grasped the correct meaning. (Author/MM)

Reviews vantage theory and makes a claim that it does not replace, but coexists with a semantics for color terms. Identifies basic facts about countability in English, and presents further evidence of the fact that the grammar of number and quantification in English is exploited to reveal different conceptualizations of what is spoken of. Claims…

Probes students' understanding of the relationships between genetic concepts. Identifies alternative conceptions and compartmentalization between related concepts. Argues that genetic instruction in 9th and 12th grade and in college in Israel needs improvement. (Author/MM)

Describes a classroom activity that teaches the mechanism of genetic drift to undergraduates. Illustrates a number of concepts that are critical in developing evolution literacy by sampling M&M milk chocolate candies. (MM)

Presents a concept map that is a graphic referential tool, useful not only in the ordering of the reference material of a given domain, but also as a tool where the merging of verbal and graphic representation can have an advantage over the conventional linear structure of texts. (Author/VWL)

Finds that the construction of concept maps may help students make links between scientific concepts and related topic areas. Describes different methods of concept map analysis which illustrate different levels of conceptual development. (CCM)

Studied the effect of exposure to principled changes in concept formation in four experiments involving 280 undergraduate and graduate students. Analyses reveal clear evidence of a transformational path with systematic training. Discusses implications for theories of similarity and categorization. Contains 83 references. (SLD)

Presents the semantic information theory, formulated by the philosopher Fred Dretske, as a contribution to the discussion of metatheories and their practical implications in library and information science. Highlights include mathematical communication theory; digitization, perception, cognition, and concept formation; information and knowledge;…

Studied the learning conceptions of 27 students in their last year of elementary school (grade 6) in the Netherlands. Results show these students to have different beliefs about aspects of learning, resulting in three identifiable learning conceptions: restricted learning conception, functional learning conception, and developmental learning…

Examines first-year chemical engineering students' conceptions of the energy changes taking place in dissolution. Students were individually interviewed and transcripts (n=17) were analyzed using a phenomenographic methodology. The phenomenographic category explanations given by students were used as the basis for developing an approach to…

Identifies specific difficulties students had with ionizing radiation and radioactivity using interviews. Explores students' pre-instruction thoughts on these topics. (Author/MM)

Conceptual development may be described in terms of a gradual shift in which one of several alternative explanatory principles is the learner's preferred choice. Illustrates the long-term nature of conceptual change as a learner comes to see the limitations of one explanatory framework and the scope for exploring and developing another. (Contains…

Reviews the history of comparative adult education and the multiple pathways afforded by postmodernism and poststructuralism. Concludes that comparative adult education should avoid bipolar constructs and include exploration of the following: analysis, forces, power, genre, communication, interculturality, knowledge construction, evaluation, and…

Purpose: This study explores the development and testing of an instrument to measure long-term-care planning behavior. Design and Methods: Researchers operationalized proposed constructs and response styles as statements in a questionnaire. A telephone survey involved 150 randomly selected residents of Miami-Dade County, Florida who were between…

Three experiments document that conceptual knowledge influences lexical acquisition in infancy. A novel target object was initially labeled with a novel word. In both yes-no (Experiment 1) and forced-choice (Experiment 2) tasks, 2-year-olds' subsequent extensions were mediated by the conceptual description of the targets. When targets were…