This descriptive study examined the conceptions and misconceptions students in health professions have regarding older people. The research was conducted in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The findings revealed that students in health professions, as a whole, demonstrated a high degree of stereotypic misconceptions and poor knowledge about aging and older…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of readers' misconceptions on text comprehension. College students with misconceptions in science were asked to read and recall a text that contradicted their misconceptions. Students with no misconceptions served as the control group. Both online (think-aloud, reading times) and offline…

Many undergraduate students have difficulty with the transition to proof-based courses in mathematics. This paper discusses students' beliefs about proof and justification in mathematics just prior to entry into such courses. The paper is based on in-depth interviews with students. The data suggests that some students have beliefs that may in part…

This paper describes a sequence of lessons from two Calculus I classes for teaching the epsilon-delta definition of a limit. In these lessons, the author elicited students' misconceptions and perceptions of this definition through a reading/writing lesson and then used these student ideas to design a lesson aimed at addressing these misconceptions…

This study involved the development and application of a two-tier diagnostic test measuring students' understanding of flowering plant growth and development. The instrument development procedure had three general steps: defining the content boundaries of the test, collecting information on students' misconceptions, and instrument development.…

Physicists have known for some time that pendulum motion is a useful analogy for other physical processes. Chemists have played with the idea from time to time but the strength of the analogy between pendulum motion and chemical processes has only received prominent published recognition since about 1980, although there are details of the analogy…

James Wandersee asked in 1986: "Can History of Science help science educators anticipate students" misconceptions?. This paper aims to answer the same question by attempting a comparative bibliographical study between the assumptions of early philosophers and the conceptions of children relating to the roles of light and the eye in the process of…

The implications of history and philosophy of chemistry are explored in the context of chemical models. Models and modeling provide the context through which epistemological aspects of chemistry can be promoted. In this work, the development of ideas and models about acids and bases (with emphasis on the Arrhenius, the Bronsted-Lowry, and the…

This paper begins by weighing the term sustainability and considering its meaning in "common culture" terms as people outside the academy might understand it. The first implication is that none of our current behaviour meets the simplest criteria of sustainability. The question "why?" is raised. In responding to this question I suggest that our…

Students' understanding of functions is a topic that has been researched extensively. In this qualitative study, five university students of varying mathematical backgrounds were interviewed to reveal strategies and misconceptions as they struggled with graphical and analytical tasks relating to sum functions. Weaker students are seen to rely…

"High stakes testing" is to be understood as testing with serious consequences for students, their teachers and their educational institutions. It plays a central role in holding teachers and educational institutions to account. In a recent article Randall Curren seeks to refute a number of philosophical arguments developed in my "The Limits of…

Standard false belief tasks indicate that normally developing children do not fully develop a theory of mind until the age of 4 years and that children with autism have an impaired theory of mind. Recent evidence, however, suggests that children as young as 3 years of age understand that thought bubbles depict mental representations and that these…

This paper presents comments on the article by D. Westen and J. Weinberger, which stated that '...science can be viewed as the history of confirmatory biases" (p. 609). This comment's authors prefer an alternative formulation: The history of science can be viewed as a constant and largely successful struggle to overcome confirmatory biases.…

The persistence of students' misconceptions about motion illustrates the enormous difficulty that teachers face in their attempts to overcome these with traditional physics instruction. An understanding of students' ideas about motion and ways to incorporate them into successful instructional approaches can be obtained from an analysis of…

This paper examines the knowledge and understanding of Hong Kong secondary school students about the composition of unpolluted and polluted air, and the nature and effects of air pollutants. A number of misconceptions are highlighted, including the common belief amongst younger students that oxygen was more common in unpolluted air than nitrogen.…