Classification is the arrangement of objects such as e.g. organisms, ideas, or information into groups. Its purpose is to make things easier to identify, describe, organize, find and study. Although ...classification itself is meant to help people to unify or clarify objects they are interested in, publications show that students might find it difficult to classify plants, animals and other organisms. The goal of the study has been to investigate Polish students’ conceptions and attitudes towards animal classification and reveal the gaps between these and current scientific knowledge. The study has been conducted by surveys and in-depth interviews of 34 pupils, from primary schools. The research shows that students have similar conceptions about animal classification and also that children see the purpose behind animal classification but find it hard to apply in practice. Moreover, students were using different factors to distinguish animal classes from the ones used by scientific community. For example, they differentiated animals on the basis of: food they consume, respiratory system and utility for humans. Authors suggest that more stress should be put on these aspects during designing lessons about animal classification.
Over the last decade, Financial Literacy (FL) and interventions aimed at improving it, that is Financial Education (FE), have been the focus of increased attention from economists, governments, and ...international organizations such as the world Bank and OECD, but much less by scholars in the fields of Learning and Instruction. We examined open-ended written answers on the causes of the economic crisis that started in 2007-2008, as given by 381 Italian secondary school and university students, and 268 Swiss Italian-speaking secondary school students. Most Italian students mentioned internal political causes (i.e., corrupt politicians or inefficiency of the government), whereas Swiss students mentioned banks more often. International factors were rarely mentioned by either group, and explanations were generally very poor, listing a few causes without making connections between them. These findings indicate the need for economics education aimed at making people more knowledgeable of the workings of the economic system and the effects of financial systems on the real economy.
The point of view of University students about what happens in the classroom is different from the one teaching staff has; students see the educative action as the concretion of a series of decisions ...each professor has made, and analyzes and evaluates this set of decisions based on the contribution in their learning process. The students' point of view is complementary to professor's one, and therefore it is necessary for all professors who wish to review and optimize their action in the classroom, because a better understanding of educational fact facilitates and targets innovation and improves teaching. Aiming to listen and gather the voices of the student body, we have conducted several investigations in various Faculties of the University of Barcelona (Law, Teacher Training, Pedagogy and Chemistry) and the University School of Infirmary. The contributions of the students have been made in discussion groups; this methodology is appropriate to facilitate that the students, as protagonists of the learning process, elaborate and develop ideas, criteria, approaches and meanings about the events that occur in their teaching and learning environments. In this article we intend to show up, in a structured way, what students think, conceive and express about two aspects of the university teaching activity in which they are involved because they affect the development of their personal training project: the content selection and didactical strategies selection. Both decisions are taken -have to be taken- by university professor, but in both cases the student body is -has to be- a fundamental referent. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Digital technologies are now an integral aspect of the university student experience. As such, academic research has understandably focused on the potential of various digital technologies to enable, ...extend and even 'enhance' student learning. This paper offers an alternate perspective on these issues by exploring students' actual experiences of digital technology during their academic studies - highlighting the aspects of digital technology use that students themselves see as particularly helpful and/or useful. Drawing on a survey of 1658 undergraduate students, the paper identifies 11 distinct digital 'benefits' - ranging from flexibilities of time and place, ease of organizing and managing study tasks through to the ability to replay and revisit teaching materials, and learn in more visual forms. While these data confirm digital technologies as central to the ways in which students experience their studies, they also suggest that digital technologies are not 'transforming' the nature of university teaching and learning. As such, university educators perhaps need to temper enthusiasms for what might be achieved through technology-enabled learning and develop better understandings of the realities of students' encounters with digital technology.
Distillation is often taught at secondary level in chemistry classes. There are, however, several pitfalls in teaching and learning the topic. First, there is not enough accessible research on ...students’ conceptions regarding distillation, which makes it difficult for teachers and teacher educators to teach accordingly in school or university. Second, the scientific explanation of distillation, especially the separation of liquid-liquid mixtures, is much more complex than represented in school books or other learning material. Third, teachers understandably rely on the representation in school books and other materials when teaching distillation, so that inappropriate concepts may be transferred to students. In this article, we follow the model of educational reconstruction and illustrate with reference to chemistry textbooks, school books, our own research results, and other studies on students’ conceptions the three pitfalls named above. Thus, this article aims to provide support for teachers and teacher educators to structure lessons on distillation based on scientifically appropriate information and with regard to students’ conceptions.
This study reports on the theoretical- and empirical-based design and evaluation of cell membrane biology learning activities within the Model of Educational Reconstruction and experiential realism. ...First, we designed analogy-based learning activities by considering students' and scientists' conceptions as described in the literature. Secondly, we carried out two video-taped teaching experiments to study students' learning processes when interacting with the learning activities. Interpreting students' conceptual development as thinking pathways enabled us to identify and understand the roots of their learning difficulties. Due to inherent ontological and epistemological presumptions, the students had difficulties in understanding that cell membrane structure determines their two-fold function: to separate and to connect environments in order to maintain living processes. The multiple analogies we employed helped foster conceptual development because they highlighted aspects of the concrete everyday experiences the students already had, but had not thought about. As a result of the learning activities, the students revised their conceptions regarding the terms barrier, gatekeeper and environment and connected these to a more coherent conceptual structure of cell membrane biology. Methods and outcomes of the study may contribute to a better understanding of how this important concept can be brought to science classrooms.
The COVID-19 pandemic had an immense impact on communities around the world. We know that new epidemic-prone diseases will emerge in the future. Consequently, it is important to investigate what ...impact the current pandemic had on school children's understanding of infectious diseases in order to develop biology education based on that novel understanding. The aim of this study was to explore Swedish middle school (10-12-year-old) pupils' understanding of infectious diseases and their perceived sources of knowledge. Data was collected through individual semi-structured interviews with fifteen pupils and analysed by thematic coding. Results revealed a great impact of the pandemic on the respondents' conceptions. Firstly, their notion of infectious diseases based on their idea of COVID-19 was elusive because COVID-19 can manifest very differently. Secondly, the need to care about oneself and others was recognized. Thirdly, the importance of vaccines was recognized, but vaccines were given different roles. Finally, their understanding of infection seems to originate from informal domains such as the news and the Internet, rather than from biology education. One proposal for biology teaching could be to introduce scientific concepts earlier, to pay more attention to differences and similarities between infectious diseases, and to cooperate with other school subjects.
Examining how learners ascribe meaning to different aspects of their university life is a necessary undertaking in higher education. This article aims to investigate university students' conceptions ...of engineering and explore how these conceptions relate to the context of their experience. Our data collection method and data analysis are informed by the techniques of the phenomenographic approach and the Implied Identity Framework. Fifteen engineering students in a course about sustainability participated in the study. Results revealed eight categories of participants' conceptions: (1) engineering as a practice for designing solutions; (2) engineering as a pragmatic practice for the welfare of people; (3) engineering as a knowledge-based practice; (4) engineering as a communicative practice; (5) engineering as a technology-mediated practice; (6) engineering as thinking; (7) engineering as an independent practice; and (8) engineering as learning. These conceptions had cognitive, technological, or social orientations and were related to three aspects of engineering: outcome-focused; process-focused; and person-focused. Also, findings demonstrated that different contexts of the university, workplace, and society prompt different ways of thinking about engineering. The findings place a greater emphasis on personal agency and the development of student identities as lifelong learners.
Research on conceptual understanding is one of the first steps in designing materials to improve learning. Literature reports that students have difficulties analyzing and describing phenomena in ...electric circuits. This report contributes to students' conceptual difficulties regarding simple electrical circuits by systematically analyzing an open conceptual test answered by 531 first-year engineering students. We found students' reasoning that has not yet been reported in the literature as misconceptions or difficulties. To deepen our understanding of students' difficulties, we chose five students by convenience to interview. We present evidence that there are two main contributions to the taxonomy in this study: the Series Circuit Misconception, which is when students convey that the current through bulbs is the same because they are in series, using that as a mnemonic ignoring any change in the circuit; and the Inverse Parallel Circuit Misconception, that is when students mention that the resistance of the circuit decreases when disconnecting bulbs in parallel, neither are reported in the literature. The results of this study have implications for physics education research in electric circuits and educational practice in the classroom.
The aim of this study was to enhance K-10 students’ conceptions through Computer Simulations-Aided PDEODE*E (CS-PDEODE*E) on Newton’s Laws. The PDEODE*E is a worksheet consisting of seven stages, ...which are Predict (P), Discuss (D), Explain (E), Observe (O), Discuss (D), Explore (E*) and Explain (E). The computer simulations could support learning via PDEODE*E worksheet by presenting physics’ phenomena. The Newton’s Laws focused on forces and Newton’s First Law. The research method used the 4D (Define, Design, Develop and Disseminate). The research sample included 30 K-10 students (15 boys and 15 girls, with the average age of 16 years-old). The students’ conceptions were identified through a Four-Tier Newtonian Test (FTNT) as pre- and post-test. In the developing phase, we acquired the product of computer simulations and PDEODE*E worksheet. In the disseminating phase, the value of effect size was 0.85 in the "large effect" of classification and tcount>ttable, thus, CS-PDEODE*E was more effective than CS-POE. The decisions succumbed that the students’ conceptions could be enhanced via PDEODE*E based computer simulations.
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