bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A cross‐age study of the understanding of five chemistry concepts
Authors: Abraham Michael R. , Williamson Vickie M. , Westbrook Susan L. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractA sample of 100 students from junior high school physical science, high school chemistry, and introductory college chemistry were examined for understanding of five chemistry concepts. The concepts addressed were chemical change, dissolution of a solid in water, conservation of atoms, periodicity, and phase change. The amount of experience with the concepts (grade level) and reasoning ability (developmental level) were examined as possible sources of variation in student understanding. Differences in understanding with respect to grade level were found to be significant for the concepts of chemical change, dissolution of a solid, conservation of atoms, and periodicity. However, few of the students in the college chemistry sample exhibited sound understanding of chemical change, periodicity, or phase change. The use of particulate terms (atoms, ions, molecules) increased across the grade levels. Reasoning ability proved to be a significant factor for student understanding of conservation of atoms and periodicity. An examination of the number and types of misconceptions across the grade levels revealed several interesting patterns and suggested sources for the students' alternative conceptions.
The effect of the biology critical thinking project on the development of critical thinking
Authors: Zohar Anat , Weinberger Yehudith , Tamir Pinchas 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article describes the Biology Critical Thinking (BCT) project in which carefully designed activities for developing specific critical thinking skills are incorporated into the biology curriculum. The objectives were to find out whether the BCT project contributes to the development of critical thinking skills in various biological and nonbiological topics and how it affects students' biological knowledge and classroom learning environment. The study consisted of 678 seventh graders who were assigned randomly into two groups that studied the same seventh‐grade biology textbook. Only one group, the experimental, completed the BCT activities. The results indicate that the students in the experimental group improved their critical thinking skills compared to their own initial level and compared to their counterparts in the control group. Improved critical thinking skills were observed in a new biological context and nonbiological everyday topics, suggesting generalization of thinking skills across domains. The experimental students scored significantly higher than the control on a knowledge test, suggesting that “knowledge of facts” as one educational goal and “learning to think” as another, need not conflict, but rather can interact with each other. Finally, the results show that BCT involvement decreased the frequency of teacher‐centered teaching and enhanced student‐centered, more active learning.
Experimenting in a constructivist high school physics laboratory
Authors: Roth Wolff‐Michael 
Published: October 2006

AbstractAlthough laboratory activities have long been recognized for their potential to facilitate the learning of science concepts and skills, this potential has yet to be realized. To remediate this problem, researchers have called for constructivist learning environments in which students can pursue open inquiry and frame their own research problems. The present study was designed to describe and understand students' experimenting and problem solving in such an environment. An interpretive research methodology was adopted for the construction of meaning from the data. The data sources included videotapes, their transcripts, student laboratory reports and reflections, interviews with the students, and the teacher's course outline and reflective notes. Forty‐six students from three sections of an introductory physics course taught at a private school for boys participated in the study. This article shows the students' remarkable ability and willingness to generate research questions and to design and develop apparatus for data collection. In their effort to frame research questions, students often used narrative explanations to explore and think about the phenomena to be studied. In some cases, blind alleys, students framed research questions and planned experiments that did not lead to the expected results. We observed a remarkable flexibility to deal with problems that arose during the implementation of their plans in the context of the inquiry. These problems, as well as their solutions and the necessary decision‐making processes, were characterized by their situated nature. Finally, students pursued meaningful learning during the interpretation of data and graphs to arrive at reasonable answers of their research questions. We concluded that students should be provided with problem‐rich learning environments in which they learn to investigate phenomena of their own interest and in which they can develop complex problem‐solving skills.
Relationships between students' meaningful learning orientation and their understanding of genetics topics
Authors: Cavallo Ann M. Liberatore , Schafer Larry E. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis study explored factors predicting the extent to which high school students (N = 140) acquired meaningful understanding of the biological topics of meiosis, the Punnett‐square method, and the relationships between these topics. This study (a) examined mental modeling as a technique for measuring students' meaningful understanding of the topics, (b) measured students' predisposed, generalized tendency to learn meaningfully (meaningful learning orientation), (c) determined the extent to which students' meaningful learning orientation predicted meaningful understanding beyond that predicted by aptitude and achievement motivation, (d) experimentally tested two instructional treatments (relationships presented to students, relationships generated by students), (e) explored the relationships of meaningful learning orientation, prior knowledge, instructional treatment, and all interactions of these variables in predicting meaningful understanding. The results of correlations and multiple regressions indicated that meaningful learning orientation contributed to students' attainment of meaningful understanding independent of aptitude and achievement motivation. Meaningful learning orientation and prior knowledge interacted in unique ways for each topic to predict students' attainment of meaningful understanding. Instructional treatment had relatively little relationship to students' acquisition of meaningful understanding, except for learners midrange between meaningful and rote. These findings imply that a meaningful learning approach among students may be important, perhaps as much or more than aptitude and achievement motivation, for their acquisition of interrelated, meaningful understandings of science.
Heat energy and temperature concepts of adolescents, adults, and experts: Implications for curricular improvements
Authors: Lewis Eileen L. , Linn Marcia C. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractWe conducted two studies of beliefs about laboratory and everyday thermal phenomena. The first study identified concepts of heat energy and temperature held by adolescents, adults, and scientists. We found a classic separation of “school” and “everyday” knowledge in each population. We conducted clinical interviews with 37 middle school students, 9 adults, and 8 chemists and physicists to obtain their predictions and explanations of real‐world phenomena. Many students believed that metals “conduct,” “absorb,” “trap,” or “hold” cold better than other materials and that aluminum foil would be better than wool or cotton as a wrapping material to keep cold objects cold. Respondents in each group held many intuitive ideas that were well established. Although scientists made more accurate predictions than students and gave theoretical definitions of terms, they too had difficulty explaining everyday phenomena. The second study investigated the impact of a middle school science curriculum designed to help students understand everyday thermal events. We found marked improvements in posttest scores and clinical interview responses as a result of instruction that built on students' intuitions.
What college chemistry instructors and high school chemistry teachers perceive as important for incoming college students
Authors: Razali Sulaiman N. , Yager Robert E. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractProfessors of college chemistry were asked to rank various examples of traditional chemistry knowledge and skills as to their importance for incoming students to possess. A pilot study revealed that the items—all selected from one edition of the American Chemical Society‐National Science Teachers Association (ACS‐NSTA) Chemistry Achievement Examination—represented attributes viewed as relatively unimportant. The professors then identified 29 personal traits they considered more important for incoming students to possess. Subsequently, these items, knowledge, skill, and personal attributes, were included in a three‐part assessment instrument. The instrument was administered to 69 college chemistry professors selected at random and to 37 high school chemistry teachers. The results reveal that the college professors universally identified student personal attributes as significantly more important for incoming students to possess over specific knowledge and skills included in the ACS‐NSTA Achievement Examination. Chemistry professors do not find items commonly used to assess success in high school chemistry as important attributes for incoming students to possess. Conversely, high school chemistry teachers regard the knowledge and skill items to be more important for college preparation than personal attributes.
Testing a model of science process skills acquisition: An interaction with parents' education, preferred language, gender, science attitude, cognitive development, academic ability, and biology knowledge
Authors: Germann Paul J. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractPath analysis techniques were used to test a hypothesized structural model of direct and indirect causal effects of student variables on science process skills. The model was tested twice using data collected at the beginning and end of the school year from 67 9th‐ and 10th‐grade biology students who lived in a rural Franco‐American community in New England. Each student variable was found to have significant effects, accounting for approximately 80% of the variance in science process skills achievement. Academic ability, biology knowledge, and language preference had significant direct effects. There were significant mediated effects by cognitive development, parents' education, and attitude toward science in school. The variables of cognitive development and academic ability had the greatest total effects on science process skills. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.
The role of instructional variables in conceptual change in high school physics topics
Authors: Hynd Cynthia R. , McWhorter J. Yevette , Phares Virginia L. , Suttles C. William 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis study was conducted to determine the effect of three variables on conceptual change in physics. Ninth and 10th‐grade students who, despite instruction, still held nonscientific intuitive ideas about the motion of objects participated in viewing a demonstration, engaged in student‐to‐student discussion, and/or read a refutational text about Newton's laws of motion. Students (N = 310) were randomly assigned within classes to eight groups representing combinations of the three activities and participated in pretesting, instruction, and posttesting. Posttest results revealed that reading the refutational text helped students change their intuitive ideas to scientific ones, while seeing a demonstration affected how students interacted with group and text on some measures. Discussing ideas in a group did not lead to significant learning of scientific notions but, rather, caused students to be less influenced by either the demonstration or the text.
Factors that influence learning during a scientific field trip in a natural environment
Authors: Orion Nir , Hofstein Avi 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis study deals with the educational effectiveness of field trips. The main purpose was to obtain insight concerning factors that might influence the ability of students to learn during a scientific field trip in a natural environment. The research was conducted in the context of a 1‐day geologic field trip by 296 students in Grades 9 through 11 in high schools in Israel. The study combined qualitative and quantitative research methods. Data were collected from three different sources (student, teacher, and outside observer) in three stages (before, after, and during the field trip). Using observations and questionnaires we investigated: a) the nature of student learning during the field trip, b) student attitudes toward the field trip, and c) changes in student knowledge and attitudes after the field trip. Our findings suggest that the educational effectiveness of a field trip is controlled by two major factors: the field trip quality and the “Novelty space” (or Familiarity Index). The educational quality of a field trip is determined by its structure, learning materials, and teaching method, and the ability to direct learning to a concrete interaction with the environment. The novelty space consists of three prefield variables: cognitive, psychological, and geographic. The learning performance of students whose “Novelty Space” was reduced before the field trip was significantly higher than that of students whose “Novelty Space” had not been so reduced. Thus, the former group gained significantly higher achievement and attitude levels. It is suggested that a field trip should occur early in the concrete part of the curriculum, and should be preceded by a relatively short preparatory unit that focuses on increasing familiarity with the learning setting of the field trip, thereby limiting the “Novelty Space” factors.
What high school biology teachers say about their textbook use: A descriptive study
Authors: Digisi Lori Lyman , Willett John B. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article reports the findings from a study that examined how high school biology teachers describe their instructional use of reading and textbooks. In the study, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected—by self‐report mail questionnaire and personal interview, respectively. Eighty percent of 184 sampled teachers responded to the questionnaire, and, of these, a subsample of 16 teachers—selected to be broadly representative of the questionnaire sample—were interviewed subsequently with their instructional materials present to increase recall. We found that biology teachers modified their use of textbooks according to the academic level of the biology class that they taught. In lower academic level classes, teachers provided students with many reading activities but expected them to learn biology content in class. In higher academic level classes, teachers expected students to learn from both independent reading and classroom instruction. Biology teachers viewed both reading and inquiry activities as important to learning biology, but they appeared unsure of how to incorporate reading comprehension strategies into their science instruction.
The effect of a role model project upon the attitudes of ninth‐grade science students
Authors: Evans Mary Ann , Whigham Myrna , Wang Morgan C. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article will describe an in‐school intervention project that used female role models to change the attitudes of 964 Iowa girls and boys in 57 ninth‐grade science classes toward science, math, and technical curricula and careers. The differences between the students' mean pretest and posttest scores on each of six factors found to be associated with students' attitudes toward science and math and technical careers were analyzed to determine which of five experimental groups responded most positively to the intervention. Higher difference scores indicated that the attitudes of girls and boys who participated in the intervention improved more than the attitudes of girls and boys in the control groups, suggesting that the use of female role models in the science classroom is an effective way to change students' attitudes toward science, math, and related careers.
Affordances of computers in teacher‐student interactions: The case of interactive physics™
Authors: Roth Wolff‐Michael 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThe study reported here is part of a larger project designed to understand student learning during conversations with their teacher over and about a computer‐based Newtonian microworld (Interactive Physics™). At the focus of this report are affordances of the microworld to a teacher who engaged his students in conversations about representations of phenomenal objects and conceptual entities that constitute the microworld. The study shows how the teacher used the context of Interactive Physics™ to identify students' ways of seeing and talking science. He then implemented a series of strategies to make forces “visible” to students. Data are provided to illustrate that students' learning was not local but persistent, so that they used appropriate canonical science talk without teacher support. The conclusion focuses on Interactive Physics™ as a tool that does not embed meaning as such, but takes on meaning as part of the specific (scientific) practices in the context of which it was used.This view of science as a discourse helps us to see scientific literacy not as the acquisition of specific facts and procedures or even as the refinement of a mental model, but as a socially and culturally produced way to thinking and knowing, with its own ways of talking, reasoning, and acting; its own norms, beliefs, and values; its own institutions; its shared history; and even its shared mythologies (Roseberry, Warren, & Conant, 1992, p. 65).
Gender differences in student attitudes toward science: A meta‐analysis of the literature from 1970 to 1991
Authors: Weinburgh Molly 
Published: October 2006

AbstractA meta‐analysis covering the literature between 1970 and 1991 was conducted using an approach similar to that suggested by Glass, McGaw, and Smith (1981) and Hedges, Shymansky, and Woodworth (1989). This analysis examined gender differences in student attitudes toward science, and correlations between attitudes toward science and achievement in science. Thirty‐one effect sizes and seven correlations representing the testing of 6,753 subjects were found in 18 studies. The mean of the unweighted effect sizes was .20 (SD = .50) and the mean of the weighted effect size was .16 (SD = .50), indicating that boys have more positive attitudes toward science than girls. The mean correlation between attitude and achievement was .50 for boys and .55 for girls, suggesting that the correlations are comparable. Results of the analysis of gender differences in attitude as a function of science type indicate that boys show a more positive attitude toward science than girls in all types of science. The correlation between attitude and achievement for boys and girls as a function of science type indicates that for biology and physics the correlation is positive for both, but stronger for girls than for boys. Gender differences and correlations between attitude and achievement by gender as a function of publication date show no pattern. The results for the analysis of gender differences as a function of the selectivity of the sample indicate that general level students reflect a greater positive attitude for boys, whereas the high‐performance students indicate a greater positive attitude for girls. The correlation between attitude and achievement as a function of selectivity indicates that in all cases a positive attitude results in higher achievement. This is particularly true for low‐performance girls. The implications of these finding are discussed and further research suggested.
Subject matter knowledge, classroom management, and instructional practices in middle school science classrooms
Authors: Lee Okhee 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis study examined the interrelationships among three major components of classroom teaching: subject matter content knowledge, classroom management, and instructional practices. The study involved two middle school science classes of different achievement levels taught by the same female teacher. The teacher held an undergraduate degree with a major in social studies and a minor in mathematics and science from an elementary teacher education program. The findings indicated that the teacher's limited knowledge of science content and her strict classroom order resulted in heavy dependence on the textbook and students' individual activities (e.g., seatwork) and avoidance of whole‐class activities (e.g., discussion) similarly in both classes. Implications for educational practices and further research are discussed.
From rhetoric to action: Implementing sts education through action research
Authors: Pedretti Erminia , Hodson Derek 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis article outlines the arguments for an action research approach to the implementation of STS education, and describes some of the experiences and outcomes of an action research group of six teachers (one elementary, five secondary) based at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto. The teachers' initial views, and their changing perceptions throughout the duration of the project (the 1992‐93 academic year), are presented in terms of four categories: the nature of STS education; the development of curriculum materials; personal/professional development; collaborative work. The emergence of an additional complex theme involving reinforcement, extending horizons, and building professional confidence, is considered the most significant outcome of the project.
The effects of computer animation on the particulate mental models of college chemistry students
Authors: Williamson Vickie M. , Abraham Michael R. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractModern chemistry concepts have the particulate nature of matter at their core. Chemists explain most phenomena in terms of atomic and molecular models. The lack of understanding of chemistry concepts may be linked to the students' inability to build complete mental models that visualize particulate behavior. With computer animation technology, dynamic and three‐dimensional presentations are possible. This study explores the effect of computer animations depicting the particulate nature of matter on college students' mental models of the chemical phenomena. A Particulate Nature of Matter Evaluation Test (PNMET) instrument was used to determine the nature of the students' visualizations and, therefore, their comprehension of the chemical concept studied. Animations were used in two treatment situations: (a) as a supplement in large‐group lectures, and (b) as both the lecture supplement and an assigned individual activity in a computer laboratory. These two experimental treatments were compared to a control group. Both treatment groups received significantly higher conceptual understanding scores on the PNMET than did the control group. This increased understanding may be due to the superiority of the formation of more expertlike, dynamic mental models of particle behavior in these chemical processes.