Tests for alternative conceptions of students enrolled in a second course of sciences at the Teacher Training School in Pamplona, Spain of a geological topic (silicates) that had been studied at previous educational levels. Students' concept maps showed the existence of a large number of alternative conceptions. Contains 26 references. (Author/ASK)

The purpose of this research project was to determine the effects of incorporating concept mapping on the achievement of fifth grade students in science class. The study was conducted with twenty-three students at Ata Elementary School, Trabzon, Turkey. The students were tested with teacher-constructed pre- and post tests containing 20…

Adult education and ICT (information and communication technology) are intrinsically linked and ICT infiltrates every part of our lives. As those who have grown up and been educated in the ICT age become more prominent in society those who were not find themselves with the distinct possibility of becoming second-class citizens if not so already.…

Reports on a study in which a teacher used the collaborative development of a format-free computer database to facilitate the construction of knowledge by a group of students (n=3) during a science project. Results indicate that knowledge construction is enhanced when children collaboratively develop a format-free database. Contains 27 references.…

Reports the comments of students in an A-level revision course in physics on being asked to draw a concept map for energy. Students' comments on the task were generally positive and related to their feelings about the task and their own learning. (DDR)

Evaluates concept maps (n=36) spontaneously constructed by applicants in a medical school entrance examination for content of relevant terms and the number of interrelationships indicated. Finds that merely including the relevant concepts in a map has little effect on the comprehension of those concepts, but map complexity is strongly related to…

A major policy objective of the Australian Government is to provide all young people with strong foundations in numeracy. This article reports on a national project coordinated by Deakin University. The project, entitled "Primary numeracy: A mapping, review and analysis of Australian research in numeracy learning at the primary school…

Drawing on Vygotsky's (1997a) concept of "fossilized behavior", this study examines the cultural fault lines between the imagined community (Anderson, 1991) of early childhood education and some Australian Indigenous families. Through creating a social space within which Indigenous families could examine dominant and taken-for-granted…

We report the development of an assessment instrument that provides a profile of the attainment and the errors of pre-service primary teachers across the mathematics curriculum. We describe test development, analyses and test validation involving a sample of 426 pre-service teachers in the first year of their training in primary education courses…

Proposes a Web-based collaborative inquiry learning system and describes a study of undergraduates at the National Taiwan Normal University based on a model system that investigated students' learning processes. Discusses the use of concept maps to anchor and represent knowledge during the inquiry process. (Author/LRW)

This study examined some of the affective outcomes for teacher educators and student teachers resulting from the use of semantic webbing/mapping as a strategy for facilitating reflective and critical thinking skills in a kindergarten teacher education program in Hong Kong. Interviews of a random sample of participants and an analysis of their…

Presents the text of the 1993 Ian P. Sharp Lecture on Information Science which illustrated the use of citation data from the "Science Citation Index" to obtain perspectives on Canadian science. Highlights include distribution by fields of science; highest impact and most-cited authors; and mapping science by cocitation analysis.…

Uses concept-map content analysis and interviews to gain insights into the knowledge organization and knowledge processing of preservice teachers (N=48). Concludes that active cognitive processing of knowledge is related to complex cognitive structures. Contains 29 references. (DDR)

An appreciation of the relationship between novice and expert knowledge frameworks may help develop an understanding of the process of transition from one to the other. Recommends the use of concept mapping. (DDR)

Four groups (three engineering students in each group) were videotaped while constructing concept maps in Linear Algebra. There are two aims of this study. The first is to characterize the discourse in the groups by addressing the following research questions: Do the students communicate in an "effective" way? Do the students'…