This article aims to contribute to the literature on conceptual change by engaging in direct theoretical and empirical comparison of contrasting views. We take up the question of whether naive physical ideas are coherent or fragmented, building specifically on recent work supporting claims of coherence with respect to the concept of force by…

The development of concepts of individual death and species extinction were examined in two studies. Sixty-eight, 4- to 9-year-old children and their parents participated in Study 1. Although preschoolers had some understanding of the concept of death, the ability to explain death and extinction improved over the school-age years. However, all age…

The aim of this study was to shed some light on the organization of naive knowledge, and on the process of conceptual change in everyday physics, more specifically regarding the concepts of sound and heat. Eighty-three 8-year-old children were interviewed individually in order to see if they attributed the properties of objects (such as…

The concept of giftedness is frequently challenged on the grounds that 1) it is a ragged or slippery concept, 2) it is inegalitarian, 3) it is culturally arbitrary, and 4) it fails to distinguish children with natural ability from children who are parentally pressured. I argue that all these charges are unfounded. We "can" distinguish between…

Many adult beliefs are based on the testimony provided by other people rather than on firsthand observation. Children also learn from other people's testimony. For example, they learn that mental processes depend on the brain, that the earth is spherical, and that hidden bodily organs constrain life and death. Such learning might indicate that…

D. Algom, E. Chajut, and S. Lev presented a series of definitional, conceptual, and empirical arguments in support of their conclusion that the classic and emotional Stroop effects are, in their words, "unrelated phenomena" (p. 336), such that the term emotional Stroop effect is a misnomer in reference to the relatively greater interference in ink…

This article presents a general framework for building conceptbased digital course libraries. The framework is based on the idea of using a conceptual structure that represents a subject domain ontology for classification of the course library content. Two aspects, domain conceptualization, which supports findability and ontologies, which support…

Vocabulary is the essential element of comprehending concepts in content areas. Many words used in science content-area materials are used to define concepts and to increase the conceptual development of the content area. Conceptual development is a major goal of content-area instruction. Without a clear understanding of the language of the…

Based on contemporary theories of learning, this article takes a critical view of the concept of learning objects. Learning objects decompose content into granular pieces of information that can be stored, retrieved, and reused in instruction. Current conceptualizations of learning objects support traditional, objectivist forms of instruction.…

Students often enter introductory courses lacking a consistent conceptual framework about natural sciences, and after traditional instruction, many experience little change in conceptual understanding. This article analyzes the nature and origin of misconceptions and discusses how they are formed and where they come from. It explains why it is so…

In the context of learning theories the problem of the passage from the psychological dimension governed by images to the "scientific" dimension dominated by concepts needs to be reformulated. The starting point of the question should be recognition that at a "deep" level, between the two dimensions, there is a bridge, the design of which can be…

When students take General Chemistry there are substantially fewer molecular images than they will encounter in Organic Chemistry. The molecular images Organic Chemistry students see in their textbooks are ones that use dashes and wedges to represent 2D and semi 3D views, ball and spoke, ball and wire, and structural formulas, to name just a few.…

International organisations were the main proponents of Lifelong Learning when the concept was first developed in the early 1970s. Although different organisations used different labels--Lifelong Learning, recurrent education, education permanente--they all emphasised that learning is a lifelong process and that all education should be organised…

The topic of electricity offers considerable challenge for the teacher hoping to provide students with an insight into scientific ways of thinking about circuits. The concepts used to make sense of electric circuits are abstract and students are expected to develop conceptual models of the relationship between non-observable qualities (current,…

This project entailed a three-year efficacy evaluation of the Computer and Team Assisted Mathematical Acceleration (CATAMA) Lab developed by the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University. The CATAMA Lab was proposed as an immediate and practical approach to addressing the different types of math deficits held by…