Research on mathematical equivalence, and to some extent, on number structure in early grade mathematics, has shown that most students at primary and secondary levels understand these concepts instrumentally rather than relationally. The study reported in this paper uses a design research approach to explore both mathematical equivalence and…

Topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (TSPCK) enables teachers to transform pedagogically difficult content for specific science topics into forms more easily understood by learners. In science teaching, there is evidence pointing to poor learner performance in key chemistry topics such as stoichiometry. This paper reports on the changes in…

In Life Sciences education internationally, including South Africa, the study of animal and organ morphology has traditionally involved dissections since the early nineteenth century. The major purpose of this study was to investigate how the engagement of learners with animal organ dissections may influence the development of problem-solving…

This paper reports a study on the effect of using the Lakatosian heuristic method to teach the surface area of a cone (SAC) on students' achievement according to Bloom's taxonomy levels. Two groups of students (experimental and control) participated in the study. The experimental group (n = 20) was taught using the Lakatosian heuristic method…

This article reports an exploratory multi-case study on how science teachers understand and envisage addressing learners' misconceptions about electric circuits. Four teachers from schools in and around a large South African city participated in the study. An open-ended questionnaire was designed in a novel way, questioning teachers about wrong…

Learner acquisition of higher order cognitive skills and processes in mathematics is at the centre of many current curriculum reforms the world over. Although literature suggests that high-level cognitive processes require emphasis on reasoning about and connecting ideas, in South Africa one of the biggest challenges has been to develop tools that…