Conceptual knowledge is a crucial tool for students to understand scientific phenomena. Knowledge about the structure and function of mental concepts potentially helps science educators to foster the acquisition of this tool. Specifically, the coherence of students' mental concepts is an intensely discussed issue within the related conceptual…

The community can be a powerful context and mini-laboratory for cultivating students' common understandings of science and mathematics. On the island of Panay in the Philippines, the community was the starting place for a group of fifth- and sixth-grade students to explore simple machines in their daily lives. What students learned in the process…