Reports some examples of teaching experiments based on body-related metaphors. Some of them are carried out by means of technological devices. Calls for legitimacy in school mathematics, both for an embodied cognition perspective and a related use of technology. (Author/MM)

Reports on a study on the construction of examples and counter-examples in a college-level calculus course. Verbal and written productions of the students were classified as one of activity, expression, content, and correctness. Finds two types of strategies, global and local. Analysis also distinguishes between "winning" and…

Analyzes students' misunderstanding of basic thermodynamic concepts on historical grounds. Finds that the persistence of some ideas from the caloric model are reinforced by magnitude names and unit definitions that were brought up at the early stages of thermodynamic development. Explores the failure of many popular textbooks to make a clear…

The Technology Attitude and Concept Scale-Thai, adapted from two other instruments, was completed by 716 Thai secondary students. The instrument proved culturally valid and reliable. Differences in Thai and U.S. student attitudes toward technology were found. (Contains 13 references.) (SK)

Examines structural characteristics of university engineering students' conceptions of energy elicited through paragraph writing and their relations with categories of their conceptions specific to energy in solution processes identified through interviews. Reports that structures of students' conceptions are characterized primarily by…

Examined understanding of print concepts in preschool children bilingual in English and Hebrew. Found that bilingual children were more advanced than monolinguals, regardless of task (understanding that a printed word's meaning did not change if moved to a new location, making judgments about word length and ignoring the object's size) or whether…

This article introduces major contributions of educational psychologist, Lev S. Vygotsky, through examination of his dialectical methodological approach. Topics discussed include semiotic mediation, social sources of development, verbal thinking, concept formation, spontaneous and scientific concepts, the zone of proximal development, and higher…

Explores children's conceptions of burning through observation and discussion of a number of challenging phenomenon. Finds that children's conceptions are both specific and contextually based. (Author/CCM)

Reports on group conceptions of magnetism. (Author/CCM)

Proposes an account of mechanisms by which students develop knowledge structures for modeling the physical world with algebra. (Author/CCM)

Explores students' worldviews as revealed by their ideas about the causality of earthquakes after experiencing the natural disaster. Finds that students accept scientific ideas and abandon their original worldviews, accept scientific ideas and retain their original worldviews, or retain their original worldviews and ignore the scientific…

Students prefer to classify creatures along the criteria of habitat and locomotion (method of movement). Discusses the educational consequences for biology instruction, particularly with regard to biological taxonomy, biodiversity, and evolution. (Contains 33 references.) (Author/YDS)

Explains the concept of mole and presents a teaching approach in which students can experiment with atoms and develop an understanding of mass ratios. Presents 10 examples of chemistry problems involving moles and unit conversations. (YDS)

Reports on a study designed to construct an understanding of two grade 6 students' proportional reasoning schemes. Finds that two mental operations, unitizing and iterating, play an important role in students' use of multiplicative thinking in proportion tasks. (Author/MM)

Presents a learning experience based on students' mathematical research into original geometric concepts with the help of dynamic geometry software. Makes the case that mathematical definitions have an arbitrary character and that proof plays the role not only of verification, but of discovery and explanation. (Author/MM)