Suggests that trivialized versions of constructivism are promulgated due to misunderstandings of vocabulary adopted by its advocates. Discusses specifics of frustrations in an effort to communicate the insights and implications of radical and social constructivist theories to preservice and practicing teachers. Presents a classroom episode to show…

Analyzes the nature and growth of students' algebraic knowledge and thinking from an epistemological perspective supported by historical observations. Focuses on two crucial transitions: from the purely operational algebra to the structural algebra of a fixed value of an unknown and then to the functional algebra of a variable. (Contains 58…

The concept of metacognition is discussed, with a review of attempts at definition. A. Brown's (1987) four historical roots of metacognition--verbal reports as data, executive control, self-regulation, and other-regulation--are summarized. Influence from the developmental theory of L. S. Vygotsky (1978) may result in a clearer conceptualization of…

Discusses two authors' views on critical thinking. McPeck denies the possibility of critical thinking, stating it is burdened by informal logic. Paul believes critical thinking includes logical, epistemological, psychological, and social dimensions springing from moral and political concerns. The paper examines the debate over general versus…

Examines the extent to which science education graduate students enjoy a well-articulated position on the compatibility of science and religion and, as a result, are comfortable with their espoused views and plans for the role of religion in classroom discussions. Examines changes in students' mental states as a form of conceptual change after a…

Presents the epistemology of scientific concepts from a schematic modeling perspective. Discusses students' initial cognitive states based on the level of commensurability between students' own concepts and their scientific counterparts. Contains 87 references. (DDR)

Tracks five-year-old children's ideas by a range of means during and subsequent to a classroom sequence on evaporation. Explores the relationship between social and individual perspectives on learning, and questions some assumptions underlying conceptual change research. Analyzes the children's explanations of various evaporation phenomena over…

Presents findings of the images of science drawn upon in laboratory work by upper secondary and university students in academic streams with a science focus. Questions required students to comment on laboratory investigations carried out by research scientists or science students. Shows that students' reasoning has an epistemological and an…

Examines how the Interrogative Model of Inquiry (I-Model), developed for the purposes of epistemology and philosophy of science, could be applied to analyze elementary school students' process of inquiry in computer-supported learning. Suggests that the interrogative approach to inquiry can be productively applied for conceptualizing inquiry in…

Focuses on how students' epistemological beliefs are related to conceptual change learning in science. Addresses: taking students' epistemological beliefs into account; findings of secondary school students' epistemological beliefs about science; and instructional strategies to promote students' mature epistemological beliefs. Focuses specifically…

Students' conceptions and beliefs about learning are constructs that have been proposed in two independent lines of research, phenomenographic and metacognitive, and analysed using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, respectively. The present research examines and integrates in a single study both constructs and methodologies. Data were…

This symposium examines the science education research enterprise from multiple theoretical perspectives. The first paper, "Contextual Constructivism; The Impact of Culture on the Learning and Teaching of Science (William Cobern), focuses on broad issues of culture and how constructivism is affected by the context of culture. Culturally based…

The way that students use mental representations when acquiring new knowledge can be exploited more systematically in the teaching of language for special purposes (LSP). A variety of modes of representation exist, including those in the external sensory world, that are received through the different senses and individual representational systems.…

Four questions are posed: (1) Is knowledge utilization a rhetorical evocation? (2) Is the conjunction of knowledge with utility part of a cultural system of common sense? (3) Is utility a normative or a descriptive concept? and (4) How does the concept of knowledge utilization figure in the specialized discourse of social scientists? This paper…

The tentativeness of knowledge is a safety catch that a pretension to usefulness tends to remove. The problematic concept of knowledge utilization defeats the purposes of both knowing and action, for it overestimates the certainty of knowledge and underestimates the range of valid practical concerns. Thirty-seven references are provided.…