This study aims to examine the effect of conceptual understandings related to anion-cation, acid-base, ionic-covalent, metal-nonmetal, and number of protons-number of electrons concept pairs taught in the periodic table to 8th grade students with the 5E learning model supported by concept maps. The study was conducted among 100 (50 in the…

Concept maps are used to assess and improve prospective teachers' conceptual understanding levels. In this research, the aim was to describe prospective science teachers' conceptual understanding of the atom by using concept maps. The research employed the case study approach, one of the qualitative research patterns. The research group consisted…

It is important to be able to make better informed decisions about issues such as sustainability and climate change that have both personal and global impact as early as possible in life. Primary teachers have a significant role in supporting students' learning and understanding of these concepts. One important teaching skill that needs to be…

This study aims to find out the effect of activities and practices on concept education to help carry out activities to teach these concepts more effectively and permanently, and determine student preconceptions about the concepts related to the landforms in the 5th-grade social studies curriculum in the learning subdomain called "People,…

A prescription favored in this article calls for the joint use of "learning maps" and "instructional maps." Why then the "Vs." in the title? Simply put, it is a rhetorical device. It calls attention to a key difference between the two. This article explicates the difference. It also informs how alone and in…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of three Structured Divergent discussion board prompt designs on knowledge construction in a graduate online course. According to Andrews (1980), the form of the question affects the extent of the response within a discussion. The Playground prompt, the Brainstorming prompt, and the Focal prompt…

Traditional instructional materials such as textbooks contain significant educational content, but the navigational mechanisms to access that content are limited and, more importantly, not designed with learning in mind. To address this gap, we present the Adaptive Map, a novel organization and navigation tool designed to help students better…

The framework for the study of concept formation embraced by the articles in this special issue makes it possible to observe and catalog the mechanisms by which conceptual structures in the wild achieve and maintain organization. I propose a provisional inventory of such mechanisms that includes the primitive mechanisms of dimensionality…

This article notes the convergence of recent thinking in neuroscience and grounded cognition regarding the way we understand mental representation and recollection: ideas are dynamic and multi-modal, actively created at the point of recall. Also, neurophysiologically, re-entrant signalling among cortical circuits allows non-conscious processing to…

A large body of research in the learning sciences has focused on students' commonsense science knowledge--the everyday knowledge of the natural world that is gained outside of formal instruction. Although researchers studying commonsense science have employed a variety of methods, 1-on-1 clinical interviews have played a unique role. The data…

"Context-based courses" are increasingly used in an address to the major challenges that science education currently faces: lack of clear purpose, content overload, incoherent learning by students, lack of relevance to students, and lack of transfer of learning to new contexts. In this paper, four criteria for the design of context-based courses…

The consideration of threshold concepts is offered in the context of biological education as a theoretical framework that may have utility in the teaching and learning of biology at all levels. Threshold concepts may provide a mechanism to explain the observed punctuated nature of conceptual change. This perspective raises the profile of periods…

This review presents a rare blend of a scholar's insight into research and a teaching artist's insight into what the implications of that research can and should be for all teaching artists, regardless of their field. The author thoroughly examines Daniel Serig's 2006 research "A Conceptual Structure of Visual Metaphor" (Studies in Art Education,…

To explore the ways in which teacher-guided and student-centered instructional approaches influence students' conceptual understanding of seasonal change, we designed a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) course to compare, by means of concept maps, the learning outcome of students in two groups: a teacher-guided (TG) class (with whole-class…

High-stakes accountability policies such as the federal No Child Left Behind legislation require districts and schools to use data to measure progress toward standards. In doing so, such policies assume that practitioners can and will use data to enhance decisionmaking and improve teaching and learning. However, educators use and make sense of…