Students can often give correct answers to test questions without having accurate mental models. The manipulation of celestial spheres and visits to interactive planetarium presentations improve student understanding of sky motion. Students think that moon phases are caused by Earth's shadow on Moon. Exlploration of student difficulties with prediction strategies and semantics that physicists use when describing images, mirrors, and lenses. Describes the rigorous development a nationally adopted conceptual test in physics education that is used to determine the effectiveness of various instructional techniques for students' conceptions of Newton's three laws of motion.
Teachers predict much higher student achievement gains than students can actually achieve.
Students' conceptions of gravity are highly dependent on the specifics of their mental model of a spherical Earth. Describes a complete framework vision for a national content, instruction, assessment, program, and teacher professional development in science education. Students have a wide variety of mental models of Earth as a sphere. Describes a highly effective and systematic interviewing strategy appropriate for investigating student conceptions. Describes a highly effective and systematic interviewing strategy appropriate for investigating student conceptions finding students have misconceptions about gravity.