Understanding mechanisms underpinning formation of convection currents is pivotal for developing explanations of plate tectonics when teaching Geoscience topics. While student generated diagrams explaining convection currents may be used to evaluate student conceptual understanding and alternative conceptions in this topic, students may need…

Understanding plate tectonics is pivotal to development of an integrated understanding of Geoscience topics. However, geology is frequently introduced to students in lower secondary school by describing separate processes, such as sedimentary rock formation, rather than investigating the overall driving forces for change. This study investigated…

Helping students understand that the scientific community's claims change through time, sometimes radically, allows them to develop a well-grounded sense of the "nature of science." Learning to reason about how scientific claims come to be accepted, and later refuted, is important for understanding the tentative nature of scientific…

This experiment investigated whether study of a scientific text and a visual display that contained redundant text segments would affect memory and transfer. The authors randomly assigned 42 students from a university in the southwestern United States in equal numbers to 1 of 2 conditions: (a) a redundant condition, in which participants studied a…

Discusses the use of a strip log as a diagrammatic representation of the information available in a sequence of sedimentary rocks. Describes the design of the strip log (both symbolically and by visual/spatial patterns) and some of the possible interpretations that can be made using them. (TW)

Describes the use of analysis of rotational faults in undergraduate structural geology laboratories to provide students with applications of both orthographic and stereographic techniques. A demonstration problem is described, and an orthographic/stereographic solution and a reproducible black model demonstration pattern are provided. (TW)