This study aimed at exploring the understanding of concept inventories for classroom assessment by physics tutors and pre-service teachers in selected diploma teachers' training colleges in Tanzania. The study employed a qualitative research approach and a case study design. Eight physics tutors and 20 second-year pre-service physics teachers from…

It has recently been suggested that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has a concept-specific nature, beyond the topic-specific level of PCK. This paper reports a case study of three pre-service teachers' reported PCK about three fundamental concepts within the topic of electrostatics, namely electrostatic force, electric field and electric field…

In this paper we probe prospective mathematics teachers' thinking as displayed in their solutions to a geometry content knowledge-based task. Geometry content knowledge is examined in terms of connections made by these prospective teachers between the geometric configurations and the geometric principles established through visualization and…

Students' graph comprehension may be affected by the background of the students who are the readers or interpreters of the graph, their knowledge of the context in which the graph is set, and the inferential processes required by the graph operation. This research study investigated these aspects of graph comprehension for 152 first year…

The study is part of a larger project concerned with addressing the problem that Eritrean science teachers face in their attempt to implement a new learner-centred science curriculum. Specifically, the study attempted to determine the effects of the use of an Argumentation-Based Instructional Model (ABIM) on 25 pre-service science teachers'…

This study compares the scientific and alternative conceptions of energy and momentum of university first-year science students in Ethiopia and the US. Written data were collected using the Energy and Momentum Conceptual Survey developed by Singh and Rosengrant. The Concentration Analysis statistical method was used for analysing the Ethiopian…

This study focuses on the effects of the exposure of pre-service education students (n=87) to a variety of toys used as educative curriculum material in an attempt to develop their understanding of energy. Changes in their knowledge, their confidence in terms of this knowledge, and the reasons they attributed for any changes in both their…

This study investigated the influence of a short explicit-reflective Nature of Science Course (NOSC) on access students' ideas about the Nature of Science (NOS). Eighty five students registered for a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa went through a seven week course that deliberately sought to develop…