Implementation of "Geography for Life: The National Geography Standards" has met with mixed success. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing this innovation adoption process. A framework of external and internal factors that influence how teachers come to understand and incorporate the form and function of educational…

This paper presents a lifespan perspective of sexuality issues for individuals with developmental disabilities. Individuals with developmental disabilities are human beings who have historically been denied the right to express their sexuality or engage in sexual relationships due to misconceptions or negative attitudes. Using a hypothetical case…

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is steadily increasing in severity throughout the developing world. Recently, Southeast Asia has become a rising concern for health care professionals in the field of infectious disease (UNAIDS, 2004). Most of Southeast Asia is experiencing surging prevalence and incidence rates of HIV infection. One particular country of…

This paper reports on a study conducted among Greek kindergarten teachers aiming to explore their conceptual frameworks on a major environmental issue of our times: the ozone layer depletion. The choice of this particular issue was premised on its novelty, complexity and abstractness which present teachers with difficulties in its teaching. A free…

Misconceptions among students studying physics have been widely reported in the research literature. Many teachers are not acquainted with this literature. Moreover, many of them claim that only weak students have misconceptions. This paper reports on an online activity focusing on misconceptions of students regarding Newton's 3rd Law, that is…

Academic libraries are the cornerstones of universities in providing information resources for the students and staff of the university. Indirectly, they may be instrumental in the development of beliefs and attitudes regarding the employment of disabled people. In 1998, the Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted a study into the status and…

Conducted in urban and rural schools in two provinces of South Africa, the present study reports biology learners' understanding of concepts about genetics and inheritance. Participants were Grade 11 and 12 learners, aged 15-16 years. The tools included a written questionnaire, interviews, pre- and post-paper and pencil tests and focus group…

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) was the foundation for this study that explored the effect of science text and image integration on grade 9 students' reading comprehension. Two texts in Chinese on the moon phase with different print and image integration were compared--a traditional textbook (TT) used in Taiwanese junior high schools and a…

This paper provides a framework for examining the role of argumentation and thinking and is consistent with the research on pedagogical and theoretical misconceptions. The focus is on presenting a framework to discuss and illustrate how argumentation is related to social thinking (dialogic reasoning) and conceptual change, and provide common…

The subject knowledge primary teachers have as a basis for their teaching has become a major concern in preservice and inservice teacher education. This paper reports on a study that investigated the science and pedagogical content knowledge of a sample of 42 preservice primary teachers in England. Assignments and questionnaires were used to…

Two related studies are reported about the (lack of) activation of real-world knowledge in elementary school students' understanding and solution of school arithmetic word problems. In the first study a set of word problems was collectively administered to 75 fifth-graders during a typical mathematics lesson. Half of the problems were standard…

Students often hold personal explanations for natural phenomena that are intuitive, alternative to current scientific explanations, and extremely tenacious. This research effort attempted to document and interpret if and how exposure to conceptual change instructional techniques influenced one experienced teacher's conceptions of teaching science…

The linguistic and cultural diversity of America's school population has increased dramatically during the past decade, and is expected to increase even more in the future. But, for many children of immigrant and minority families, U.S. education is not a successful experience. One fourth of African Americans, one third of Hispanics, one half of…

Computer Mediated Conferencing (CMC) courses are attracting students with weak computer communication skills. This document describes a study which examines the outcomes for such students when they enrolled in a CMC course that required high levels of peer interaction. It was anticipated that students with weaker skills would miss important…

A study examined the role that an elaborate analogy can play when high school students learn a concept from a leading science textbook. The elaborate analogy had graphic and text components that integrated and mapped key features from the analogy (a factory) to the target concept (an animal cell). The target features were parts of the cell and, by…