Recent emphasis on learning biology through scientific investigations has focused instruction on understanding and using scientific evidence. To unpack the complexities of evidentiary reasoning, here we present a novel laboratory investigation for teaching the Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) in an introductory biology laboratory course that was…

Police worldwide regularly review closed-circuit television (CCTV) evidence in investigations. This research found that London "police experts" who work in a full-time "Super-Recogniser Unit" and front line "police identifiers" regularly making suspect identifications from CCTV possessed superior unfamiliar face…

Argumentation is an important component of scientific education (Osborne, 2010). However, how students create and evaluate competing arguments in scientific investigations is a complex construct, which presents significant challenges for assessment. We engaged 349 middle and high school students in a virtual scientific investigation based on an…

This paper reports on the results of a study investigating the potential to embed Informal Statistical Inference in statistical investigations, using TinkerPlots, for assisting 8th grade students' informal inferential reasoning to emerge, particularly their articulations of uncertainty. Data collection included students' written work on a…

Evidence is accumulating that the level of text comprehension is dependent on the situatedness and sensory richness of a child's mental representation formed during reading. This study investigated whether these factors involved in text comprehension also serve a functional role in writing a narrative. Direct influences of situatedness and sensory…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the controlled versus the automatic nature of temporal preparation. If temporal preparation involves controlled rather than automatic processing, it should be reduced by the addition of a concurrent demanding task. This hypothesis was tested by comparing participants' performance in a temporal…

Testing aids, including student-prepared testing aids (a.k.a., cheat sheets or crib notes) and open-textbook exams, are common practice in post-secondary assessment. There is a considerable amount of published research that discusses and investigates the impact of these testing aids. However, the findings of this research are contradictory and…

Background: During face-to-face questioning, typically developing children and adults use gaze aversion (GA), away from their questioner, when thinking. GA increases with question difficulty and improves the accuracy of responses. This is the first study to investigate whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; associated with reduced…

This article presents an innovative method for capturing the content of adolescents' electronic communication on handheld devices: text messaging, e-mail, and instant messaging. In an ongoing longitudinal study, adolescents were provided with BlackBerry devices with service plans paid for by the investigators, and use of text messaging was…

Ensuring the quality of investigations requires the understanding of procedures by which empirical evidence is obtained. This can be interpreted as becoming aware of and using criteria for evidence in one's mental structure. The question is whether this process can be observed in practice. In two schools for pre-university education where 11th…

The study investigates the relationship between impact of electronic resources and its usage in academic libraries in Ghana: evidence from Koforidua Polytechnic & All Nations University College, Ghana. The study was a quantitative approach using questionnaire to gather data and information. A valid response rate of 58.5% was assumed. SPSS…

This study focused on first-semester college students, investigating (a) indirect effects of aggregate alcohol use on grade point average (GPA) through academic effort (skipping class and time on schoolwork) and (b) daily effects of alcohol use on reduced effort. Eighty students reported daily alcohol use and academic effort (skipping class and…

Recent school science curriculum developments in many countries emphasise that scientists derive evidence for their claims through different approaches; that such practices are bound up with disciplinary knowledge; and that the quality of data should be appreciated. This position paper presents an understanding of the validity of data as a set of…

Although there is strong evidence that Broca's area is important for syntax, this may simply be a by-product of greater working memory and/or cognitive control demands for more complex syntactic structures. Here we report an experiment with event-related transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate whether Broca's area plays a causal…

Some recent evidence has suggested that perspective taking skills in everyday life situations may differ across cultural groups. In the present study, we investigated this effect via culture priming in a group of Chinese-English bilingual adults in the context of a communication game. Results showed that the participants made more perspective…