Background: This work is based on the idea that young children benefit from early introduction of scientific concepts. Few researches describe didactical strategies focusing on physics understanding for young children and analyse their effectiveness in standard classroom environments. Purpose: The aim is to identify whether didactical strategies…

Focuses on the familiar problem of students' understanding of elementary electrical circuits from a much neglected point of view. Suggests that the patterning commonly found in students' ideas might have its roots in the cognitive processing with which students operate their mental models of d.c. electrical circuits. Studies Japanese 10-11 year…

Describes a study of Taiwanese 14-year-olds' (n=48) cognitive structures derived from the instruction of basic atomic physics. Finds that even academically above-average students tended to use relatively lower-level modes of knowledge construction, focusing on reciting or describing specific factual knowledge in physics. (Contains 27 references.)…