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A technique for exploring students' views of the world
Roger Osborne,John K. Gilbert +1 more
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In this paper, the authors used an interview-about-instances method to understand the physics concepts of a student's view of the world and the student's meanings for words.Abstract:
In a recent paper Shaw and Thomas (1979) suggest that to an external observer learning may appear to be the achievement of certain behavioural objectives. However, for the learner, learning is the revision of his or her own cognitive structure, that is a shift in the way he or she perceives and construes events and behaves in situations. This view of learning implies that an appreciation of the student's view of the world, and the student's meanings for words, needs to be fully appreciated if teaching is to be successful. Physics teachers need to be aware of the various concept understandings that pupils bring to physics classrooms and thereby appreciate the difficulties pupils may have with understanding physics concepts. It is our view that the information gained using an interview-about-instances method can contribute to this teacher awareness and in doing so can contribute to the improvement of physics teaching.read more
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Development and use of diagnostic tests to evaluate students’ misconceptions in science
TL;DR: A methodology for developing diagnostic tests and the use of two such tests in chemistry (covalent bonding and structure) and in biology (photosynthesis and respiration in plants)‐are described, illustrating the ease of identification of misconceptions which can be subsequently addressed by the teacher.
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Bathtub dynamics: initial results of a systems thinking inventory
TL;DR: Initial findings indicate that subjects from an elite business school with essentially no prior exposure to system dynamics concepts have a poor level of understanding of stock and flow relationships and time delays.
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Children's science and its consequences for teaching
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Ways of Evaluating Teacher Cognition: Inferences Concerning the Goldilocks Principle
TL;DR: The authors compare five different approaches to the evaluation of teacher cognition: (a) direct and non-inferential ways of assessing teacher belief, (b) methods that rely on contextual analyses of teachers' descriptive language, (c) taxonomies for assessin...
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Factors influencing the learning of classical mechanics
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the combined effect of certain variables on student achievement in classical mechanics, including pre-instructional knowledge of mechanics, mathematical skills, and reasoning skills of a sample of college physics students.
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An assessment of children's concepts of the earth utilizing structured interviews
Joseph Nussbaum,Joseph D. Novak +1 more
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What do secondary school boys understand about evolution and heredity before they are taught the topics
J. A. Deadman,P. J. Kelly +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, an investigation into what schoolboys understand about evolution and heredity before they are taught these topics was carried out by means of open-ended interviews and it was found that the boys' understanding had seven foci: evolution as a phenomenon, why evolution occurred, the process of change, adaptation, selection, chance, and inheritance.