Although inquiry is more engaging and results in more meaningful learning (Minner, Levy, and Century 2010) than traditional science classroom instruction, actually involving students in the process is difficult. Furthermore, many students have misconceptions about Earth's seasons, which are supported by students' prior knowledge of heat sources.…

The significant cost of hosting the London 2012 Olympics is justified, in part, by claims that the games will inspire greater social cohesion, promote peace and encourage the public adoption of active healthy lifestyles. This critical review paper examines these justifications and finds them wanting. The first section provides a socio-historic…

The software industry needs well-trained software designers and one important aspect of software design is the ability to model software designs visually and understand what visual models represent. However, previous research indicates that software design is a difficult task to many students. This article reports empirical findings from a…

Teachers often have no preparation for handling the questions and conversations that arise in the classroom when discussing literature having adoption or foster care themes. Instead of relying on personal experiences or stereotypes portrayed through the media, teachers are advised to understand the developmental tasks of children from families…

This case study describes an effective method to ameliorate the cognitive load caused by new terminology and concepts in lectures. Ten online pre-lecture resources whose design was underpinned by the principles of cognitive load theory were provided to a class of 49 first year university level chemistry students. Each resource introduced a number…

The purpose of this study is to determine the validity of common assumptions about the rate at which school decline manifests. From a population of 981 elementary schools in the state of Virginia, the author uses three operational definitions of school decline to identify samples of declining schools: Absolute (n = 217), Relational (n = 510), and…

Tropical rainforests are biologically rich ecosystems, which are threatened by a variety of different human activities. This study focuses on students' knowledge and understanding of rainforest locations, their reasons for protecting these environments and their familiarity with selected concepts about rainforest vegetation and soil. These…

Willard Waller's (1932/1976) classic account of what teaching does to teachers is examined through the lens of psychoanalytic theory in conjunction with Ovid's myth of Narcissus. Parallel themes within the two texts are analyzed and interpreted as suggesting that narcissistic psychological processes played a part in distorting teachers'…

This paper describes an instructional development effort to create effective and compelling instruction for eCommerce students. Results from a small field study inform the development project. Four high school students in an eCommerce course completed the standalone tutorial developed to teach them how to create a web page in the HyperText Markup…

In this paper we conduct a Structuralist analysis of the General Teaching Council for England's "Code of Conduct and Practice for Registered Teachers" in order to reveal how teachers are required to fulfil an apparently impossible social role. The GTCE's "Code," we argue, may be seen as an attempt by a government agency to…

This study aims to specify to what extent students understand topology during the lesson and to determine possible misconceptions. 14 teacher trainees registered at Secondary School Mathematics education department were observed in the topology lessons throughout a semester and data collected at the first topology lesson is presented here.…

The aim of the present study is to elicit students' understanding of the particulate nature of matter via a cross-age study ranging from secondary to tertiary educational levels. A questionnaire with five-item open-ended questions was administered to 166 students from the secondary to tertiary levels of education. In light of the findings, it can…

Analogies are often used in science, but students may not appreciate their significance, and so the analogies can be misunderstood or discounted. For this reason, educationalists often express concern about the use of analogies in teaching. Given the important place of analogies in the discourse of science, it is necessary that students are…

Studies on cognitive aspects of science education, especially how students achieve conceptual change, have been a focus of interest for many years. Researchers of student learning and conceptual change have developed several easily applicable teaching strategies. One of these strategies is known as "discrepant events". Discrepant events are very…

This study presents and interprets some conceptual difficulties junior-level physics students experience with Ampere's law. We present both quantitative data, based on students' written responses to conceptual questions, and qualitative data, based on interviews of students solving Ampere's law problems. We find that some students struggle to…