The aim of this study is to advance current understanding of the transactional processes that characterize students' sense-making practices when they are confronted with multiple representations of scientific phenomena. Data for the study are derived from a design experiment that involves a technology-rich, inquiry-based sequence of…

Substantial variation has been observed across an international series of studies examining the consistency of students' explanations of force and the most common meanings of force apparent in those explanations. On the surface, the variations among studies might be attributed to differences at the national level, but the studies also…

The purpose of this study was to understand how students utilized multiple representations to learn and explain science concepts, in this case the human breathing mechanism. The study was conducted with Grade 11 students in a human biology class. Semistructured interviews and a two-tier diagnostic test were administered to evaluate students'…

Elementary science standards emphasize that students should develop conceptual understanding of the characteristics and life cycles of plants (National Research Council, 2012), yet few studies have focused on early learners' reasoning about seed structure and function. The purpose of this study is twofold: to (a) examine third-grade…

This article reports a study in which two researchers collaborated with five teachers to facilitate discourse activities aimed to enhance students' learning from practical activities. The paper explores how certain teacher practices support or hinder students' learning. Four cases from the study were analyzed in depth using…

Teaching and learning about complex scientific content, such as biological evolution, is challenging in part because students have a difficult time seeing the relevance of evolution in their everyday lives. The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of the Teaching for Transformative Experiences in Science (TTES) model (Pugh, 2002)…

This quasi-experimental and pre/posttest study was designed to examine whether fourth-grade students who engaged in collaboratively writing letters to 11th-grade students performed better on tests of conceptual understanding of a unit on force and motion than students who did not. The participants included 835 fourth-grade students and 416…

Effectively designed science learning environments revolve around students' sensemaking through the use of evidence to ground explanations about natural phenomena. However, little research has been conducted to investigate elementary teachers' learning to promote students' sensemaking in elementary (K-5) classrooms. The purpose of this…

Classroom assessment is a critical aspect of teaching and learning. In this paper, Taiwanese high school students' conceptions of science assessment and the relationship between their conceptions of science assessment and of science learning were investigated. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods. First, 60 students were…

This study aimed to investigate the effect of experimenting with physical manipulatives (PM), virtual manipulatives (VM), and a blended combination of PM and VM on undergraduate students' understanding of concepts in the domain of "Light and Color." A pre-post comparison study design was used for the purposes of this study that involved 70…

This study examines students' understanding of the normative connections between key concepts of cell division, including both mitosis and meiosis, and underlying biological principles that are critical for an in-depth understanding of genetic inheritance. Using a structural equation modeling method, we examine middle school students'…

This paper describes research on the use of journals in a general education chemistry course for elementary education majors. In the journals, students describe their understanding of a topic, the development of that understanding, and how the topic connects to their lives. In the process, they are able to engage in reflection about several…

In "For Whom Is Argument and Explanation a Necessary Distinction? A Response to Osborne and Patterson," Berland and McNeill seek to argue that there is an overlap between these two discourse acts such that, in the welter of classroom life, it is difficult to make the distinction. Indeed, in their article Jonathan Osborne and Alexis Patterson did…

Understanding what children know is paramount to planning effective science instruction; however, in any classroom, the students hold a variety of ideas. Representing these differences in ways that also acknowledge the common trends among students might facilitate the process of differentiation. To exemplify one such possible process of…

In this paper, we argue that there is an emergent confusion in the literature in the use of the terms "argument" and "explanation." Drawing on a range of publications, we point to instances where these terms are either used inappropriately or conflated. We argue that the distinction between these two constructs is, however, important as a lack of…