This yearbook contains articles that give insight into students' thinking about factions, ratios, and proportions. Suggestions are offered on how to develop the concepts and skills associated with these topics. The book is divided into elementary, middle school, and professional development sections. Chapters include: (1) "The Development of…

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effect of instruction based on constructivist approach on 9th grade students' understanding of chemical bonding concepts (n=41). Also, the effects of gender differences were investigated. Control group students were taught by traditional instruction. Experimental group students were instructed by…

This paper reports on a portion of a 14-year study of the mathematical thinking of a cohort group of students that was based on an identifiable perspective on how mathematical ideas are built. Three videotape episodes are presented so that groups of students working together can be viewed at three points in time: as fourth graders (ages 9-10) and…

The definition-construction process is central to mathematics. The aim of this paper is to propose a few Situations of Definition-Construction (called SDC) and to study them. Our main objectives are to describe the definition-construction process and to design SDC for classroom. A SDC on "discrete straight line" and its mathematical and…

Socioscientific issues encompass social dilemmas with conceptual or technological links to science. The process of resolving these issues is best characterized by reasoning which describes the generation and evaluation of positions in response to complex situations. This article presents a critical review of research related to informal reasoning…

The present study investigated the effects of text structure in the acquisition of the concept of energy and the overcoming of specific preconceptions associated with it. Cypriot sixth-grade students read either a simple expository text that presented factual information or a refutation text that, in addition to the factual information, it also…

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of conceptual change text (CCT) oriented instruction over traditionally designed instruction on students' understanding of electrochemical (galvanic and electrolytic) cell concepts. The subjects of the study consisted of 64 students from the two classes of a high school in Turkey.…

All teachers bring the goals and objectives of their math programs to life as they plan and present activities, establish procedures and expectations, and interact with children. Teachers' beliefs about what children need to know, their knowledge of how children learn, and the classroom environment they create all impact how children experience…

The impact of prior learning on new learning is highlighted by the case of Dean, a Year 8 student who developed his own method to find the sum of the interior angles of a polygon without knowing why his method worked. Enriched transcripts and visual displays of the cognitive, social (Dreyfus, Hershkowitz, & Schwarz, 2001) and affective elements…

It is widely recognized that developing a successful teaching practice, one that is grounded in the principles that guide the current effort to reform mathematics education, requires a qualitatively different and significantly richer understanding of mathematics that most teachers in the 1990s possess. However, it is not as clear how teachers'…

While previous studies have recognized and have researched the resistance of students' scientific conception to change and the difficulty of the change of the conception's status, few have investigated the idea of conceptual ecology as the affective and motivational aspects might play when students are exposed to conceptual change learning. The…

In an attempt to promote the development of understanding over rote memorization, writing in mathematics has received increased attention in recent years. In Calculus, the Rule of Three (based on communicating ideas thorough algebraic, graphical and numerical means) has been replaced by the Rule of Four in which writing plays a central role.…

This book contains selected research papers presented at seminars held throughout the year 2000 in Finland by members of the Finnish Association for Research in Mathematics and Science Education (FARMSE) and students at the Finnish Graduate School of Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry Education. This volume also contains papers professor Laurence…

Many mathematics educators have lost sight of the critical importance of the mathematical understanding which underlies procedural competence, in part because we do not have a language to refer to this kind of understanding. The modal way of categorizing mathematical knowledge--conceptual and procedural knowledge--is limited in that: (a) it is…

This study investigated the academic achievement of students at the end of the school year in knowledge of gravity, acceleration, and the relationship between distance, time, and speed. The students' teachers were in the Cheche Konnen professional development seminar for three years. Participating grade levels included a heterogeneous, combined…