Teaching and learning approaches in ecology very often follow linear conceptions of ecosystems. Empirical studies with an ecological focus consistent with existing syllabi and focusing on cognitive achievement are scarce. Consequently, we concentrated on a classroom unit that offers learning materials and highlights the existing complexity rather…

Teaching and testing in science in junior secondary schools in Botswana, takes place in English which is a second language for the majority of Batswana (Citizens of Botswana are called Batswana [sing. Motswana] and the national language is Setswana.) students and a third language for many. The understanding of textual material in science has been…

The spiral bianshi curriculum, an improvement on bianshi teaching developed by Gu (2000) and in line with Marton's theory of variation (Marton & Booth, 1997), was tried out in a primary school in Hong Kong. This improved theoretical framework for the spiral bianshi curriculum comprises four types of bianshi problems--the inductive bianshi, the…

The concept of dimension, one of the most fundamental ideas in mathematics, is firmly rooted in the basis of the school geometry in such a way that mathematics teachers rarely feel the need to mention anything about it. However, the concept of dimension is far from being fully understood by students, even at the college level. In this paper, we…

This study was designed to assess whether the level of performance of selected Jamaican 11th-grade physics students on some numerical problems on the energy concept was satisfactory and if there were significant differences in their performance linked to their gender, socioeconomic background (SEB), school location, English language and…

This study uses classroom videotapes to examine the phenomenon of students who are left behind during whole-class teaching. Zooming in via these videos enabled us to analyze these classroom situations by means of a compact, multi-perspective set of theories--van Hiele theory, conceptualization, and visual perception. The analysis provided a…

This article reports on part of a doctoral study in which epistemological obstacles that mathematics students at undergraduate level encounter in coming to understand the limit of functions in different modes of representation were investigated. A group of mathematics students at undergraduate level at the National University of Lesotho was the…

The present study observed how Taiwanese college students' epistemological beliefs about mathematics evolved during a year-long historical approach calculus course. On the basis of the characteristics of initial accounts, seven students were invited to participate in this study and were divided into two groups. An open-ended questionnaire,…

A survey instrument was developed and administered to 1,222 K-12 mathematics and science teachers to measure their beliefs about and use of inquiry in the classroom. Four variables (grade level taught, content area taught, level of support received, and self-efficacy for teaching inquiry) were significantly correlated to two dependent variables,…

A new learning unit in chemistry, "Case-based Computerized Laboratories" (CCL) and Computerized Molecular Modeling" (CMM) was developed at the Technion. The CCL and CMM curriculum integrates computerized desktop experiments and molecular modeling with an emphasis on scientific inquiry and case studies. Our research aimed at investigating the…

This study provides analyses of the conversations when university students work in small groups solving context-rich physics problems. We constructed context-rich, open-ended physics problems related to everyday life situations that lack some information required to solve and complete the tasks. The students' ownership of learning, their actions…

The aim of this study is to assess the factors that are related to preschool children and their mothers on children's intuitional mathematics abilities. Results of the study showed that there were significant differences in children's intuitional mathematics abilities when children are given the opportunity to think intuitionally and to make…

The teaching and learning of mathematics in schools has drawn tremendous attention since the education reform in Taiwan. In addition to assessing cognitive abilities, Taiwan Assessment of Student Achievement in Mathematics (TASA-MAT) collects background information to help depict average student achievement in schools in an educational context.…

Thinking Journey is introduced as a mode of science instruction based on a specially designed discussion between students and teachers in the context of an imaginary journey. The paper elaborates the rationale of this mode and its specific features: enculturation into science, analytical observation, multiple perspectives of the subject and…

This article reports an alternative approach, called the combinatorial model, to learning multiplicative identities, and investigates the effects of implementing results for this alternative approach. Based on realistic mathematics education theory, the new instructional materials or modules of the new approach were developed by the authors. From…