Laboratory and demonstration have long been used to supplement lecture in chemistry education. Current research indicates that students are better served by laboratories which exercise the higher-order cognitive skills, such as inquiry-based laboratories. However, the time and the resources available to perform these recommended types of…

New capabilities in "TinkerPlots 2.0" supported the conceptual development of fifth- and sixth-grade students as they pursued several weeks of instruction that emphasized data modeling. The instruction highlighted links between data analysis, chance, and modeling in the context of describing and explaining the distributions of measures that result…

This study examined the correlation between the DIAL-3 scores of disadvantaged students from Head Start, students from other preschools, and students that did not attend a preschool. The study consisted of 110 students who were currently attending kindergarten at an elementary school in Rockland County. The instrument used for this study was the…

This mixed-methods study probed the effectiveness of three kinds of objects (video, theory, metaphor) as common reference points for conversations between online learners (student teachers). Individuals' degree of detail-focus was examined as a potentially interacting covariate and the outcome measure was learners' level of tacit knowledge related…

The study investigated the role of analogic instruction and reasoning level on the dependent measure of concept acquisition in an introductory college genetics course. The question of whether concept acquisition was facilitated through the use of instructional analogies was addressed. The control treatment consisted of expository instruction alone…

A study involving upper elementary school students (n=30) was conducted to examine conceptual change and constructivism. It is argued that a constructivist view of learning is antithetical to a vision of conceptual change in which teachers act in a diagnostic and remediate manner to help students rid themselves of their inaccurate ideas. It…

This paper takes the position that "the general phenomenon of meta-disciplinarity should find a place in contemporary investigations into the organization and production of knowledge." In the meta-disciplinary triad of art, science, and the humanities, the humanities originated out of a distinction between the human and the divine. The history of…

At the center of the conceptual framework there is visual imagery. Man's emotional and mental behavior is built on archetypal symbols that are the source of creative ideas. Native American pictography, in particular, illustrates this in the correlation between gesture speech and verbal speech. The author's research in this area has included a…

An investigation was conducted to determine the effectiveness of utilizing analogies to effect conceptual change in mathematics. Forty-one high school seniors participated in a knowledge reconstruction process regarding their beliefs about everyday probability situations such as sports events or lotteries. These mathematics students were given…

This study involved 3 days of teaching in two fourth-grade classes. A pretest and a posttest were given consisting of (1) a NAEP item asking for the length of a line drawn next to a ruler, (2) a Piagetian unit-iteration task, and (3) the measurement of an object with a ruler that had the "0" mark away from its edge. It was found in the…

This paper reports on a teaching experiment involving decimal instruction conducted with a class of elementary students (n=20) in a public school of a small city. After doing extensive work with multiplication, division, ratio, and fractions through an innovative mathematics curriculum, fifth grade students were introduced to decimal numbers. To…

Cognitive development is driven by experience, but is mediated by domain general processes, which include learning, induction, and analogy. The concepts children understand, and the strategies they develop based on that understanding, depend on the complexity of the representation they can construct. Conceptual complexity can be defined in terms…

This book is written to help teachers develop plans and ideas for implementing innovative approaches to assessment in their mathematics classes. Chapter titles are: (1) "Purposes and Goals of Assessment," (2) "Assessment and Mathematics Teaching," (3) "Procedural and Conceptual Knowledge," (4) "Problem Solving…

This digest presents a case for the development of a precise definition of environmental literacy (EL) as a prerequisite to setting standards for environmental education. The discussion includes the following: (1) establishment of the relationship between EL, environmental education, and goals of the formal education system; (2) the development of…

In the domain of research on physics education, results on students' conceptions show difficulties in physics learning. This paper aims to propose theoretical elements to interpret such learning difficulties related to physics teaching in the case of heat and temperature. Sections in this paper include: (1) Introduction; (2) Epistemological…