Stability is often an important consideration in both static and dynamic systems. While introductory students soon grasp the balance of forces required for constant velocity motion, it generally takes longer for them to reliably identify the various torques involved in producing rotational equilibrium. Accelerating systems have the additional…

In 1974, Professor Eric Laithwaite demonstrated an unusually heavy gyroscope at a Royal Institution lecture in London. The demonstration was televised and can be viewed on YouTube. A recent version of the same experiment, together with partial explanations, attracted two million YouTube views in the first few months. In both cases, the gyroscope…

A study conducted in 2013 showed that about 70-80% of teens and young adults in the United States own a smartphone. Furthermore the number of tablet PC users in the United States will increase up to more than 80% by 2015. As a result, these devices have increasingly become everyday tools, particularly for the younger generation. In recent years,…

Reform efforts in science education have aimed at fostering scientific literacy by helping learners meaningfully engage in scientific practices to make sense of the world. In this paper, we report on our second year of unit implementation that has investigated 34 fifth grade students' (10-year-olds) learning about evaporation and condensation…

This study extends current research on the refutation text effect by investigating it in learners with different levels of working memory capacity. The purpose is to outline the link between online processes (revealed by eye fixation indices) and off-line outcomes in these learners. In science education, unlike a standard text, a refutation text…

In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued Guidelines for Preschool Education (GPE) (trial version) to call on early childhood practitioners to use a child-centered and play-based approach to teaching and learning. The guidelines also include mathematics within the science domain and described its standards in a way that significantly…

This paper aims to contribute to discussions on the multimodal nature of cognition through an elaboration of the ways multimodal aspects of thinking are exploited by learners doing mathematics. Moving beyond the fact "that" multimodality occurs, this paper focuses on "how" it occurs, with particular attention drawn to the…

To investigate relationships between students' quantitative reasoning with fractions and their algebraic reasoning, a clinical interview study was conducted with 18 middle and high school students. The students were interviewed twice, once to explore their quantitative reasoning with fractions and once to explore their solutions of problems…

The main purpose of this research was to investigate how Taiwanese grade 6 readers selected and used information from different print (main text, headings, captions) and visual elements (decorational, representational, interpretational) to comprehend a science text through tracking their eye movement behaviors. Six grade 6 students read a double…

School mathematics tends to have developed from the major cultures of Asia, the Mediterranean and Europe. However, indigenous cultures in particular may have distinctly different systematic ways of referring to space and thinking mathematically about spatial activity. Their approaches are based on the close link between the environment and…

The aim of this study is to explore the mathematical problem posing performance of students in free structured situations. Two classes of fifth grade students (N = 30) were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The categories of the problems posed in free structured situations by the 2 groups of students were studied through…

Constructing explanations and participating in argumentative discourse are seen as essential practices of scientific inquiry. The objective of this study was to explore the elements and origins of pre-service secondary science teachers' alternative conceptions of tidal phenomena based on the elements used in Toulmin's Argument Model…

This paper investigates the factors that influence 15-year-old students' intentions to study physics post-16, when it is no longer compulsory. The analysis is based on the year 10 (age, 15 years) responses of 5,034 students from 137 England schools as learners of physics during the academic year 2008-2009. Factor analyses uncovered a range of…

This study explored learning competency based on the Indonesian National Examination focusing especially on chemistry performance and the circumstances of senior high school students and teachers in rural areas of Simeulue Island, Indonesia. The National Examination total score and chemistry score for students in rural areas were consistently…

The impact of a professional development experience involving scientists and fourth to eighth grade teachers of science was explored. Teachers attended a summer program at a research facility where they had various experiences such as job shadowing and interviewing scientists. They also participated in authentic inquiry investigations and planned…