Is it the Earth that turns or the Sun that goes behind the mountains? Students’ misconceptions about the day/night cycle after reading a science text

ABSTRACT

The present research tested the hypothesis that the reading of science text can create new misconceptions in students with incongruent prior knowledge, and that these new misconceptions will be similar to the fragmented and synthetic conceptions obtained in prior developmental research. Ninety-nine third- and fifth-grade children read and recalled one of two texts that provided scientific or phenomenal explanations of the day/night cycle. All the participants gave explanations of the phenomenon in question prior to reading one of the texts and after they read it. The results showed that the participants who provided explanations of the day/night cycle at pretest incongruent with the scientific explanation recalled less information and generated more invalid inferences. An analysis of the participants’ posttest explanations indicated that these readers formed new misconceptions similar to the fragmented and synthetic conceptions obtained in developmental research. The implications of the above for text comprehension and science education research are discussed.     

张良故事侠主题演变及其文化内涵

张良故事从《史记·留侯世家》开始一直流传于世,张良故事中的侠主题主要表现为在博浪沙狙击秦始皇事,在《史记》《汉书》正史里表现为复仇、游侠的形态,形成了固有的侠风色彩。随着历史潮流的变迁和文学的发展,不同时期张良故事的侠主题受到当时社会、政治、思想的影响,而展示了不同的内涵。     

Inferences and recall at ages four and seven

Inferences and recall at ages 4 and 7 were studied as a function of the cause of a target event, the presence and timing of questions prior to recall, and the type of inference demanded by the questions. 7-year-olds inferred and recalled well with stories containing any of the causal connections employed in the study. 4-year-olds performed better when physical causes, rather than either psychological causes or enabling relations, connected events. Timing of questions did not affect the 7-year-olds' inferences, but asking questions interfered with their recall. Questions about story events aided the 4-year-olds' ability to make inferences and to recall, especially when causal connections were least specified and when questions were asked following the story. 4- and 7-year-olds also differed in responding to demands for 3 specific types of inference. 4-year-olds produced significantly more unconstrained inferences than logical or constrained informational inferences. 7-year-olds were most responsive to logical inference questions, and produced significantly more logical than constrained inferences.     

钟无盐故事的流变及文化意蕴

钟离春是战国时期著名的丑女,又称钟无盐、钟无艳。从主题学的角度来看,无盐故事在不同时代不同文本中的发展演变,已使它不仅仅是一个丑女的故事。通过从情节流变轨迹透析儒家思想,从人物形象演变折射性别视角,从文本形态分布窥探受众心理,可以反映出无盐女故事所包含的多重文化意蕴。     

Learning and remembering from thematic maps of familiar regions

To examine how four methods of symbolizing data affect learning from thematic maps of familiar regions, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, 86 college students viewed one of three types of thematic map or a control table, then read a map-related text. Recall of regions with their associated theme information was greater for those who studied a map than for those who studied a table. In Experiment 2, 83 college students viewed one of two types of thematic map for either 1 or 3 min, followed by a map-related text. Shaded-region, or choropleth maps were associated with greater recall of theme information, but longer exposure time was not. In both experiments, map-related text information was recalled more than map-unrelated text information. Choropleth maps and proportional symbol maps were associated with higher reported use of metacognitive strategies. Instructional and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.The authors thank Michael P. Verdi, Janet T. Johnson, and William A. Stock for their assistance with the study and their insightful comments on an early draft.     

Learning chemistry from text: The effect of decision making

Two experiments examined the relative effects of questions requiring decisions, statements providing the decision information to students, questions not requiring decisions, and control procedures on students' memory for chemistry text reading materials. Experiment 1 employed immediate recall. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that students who made and justified decisions about the contents recalled significantly more information than students in any other condition. In addition, students who answered questions that did not require decisions recalled significantly more of the content than students in the control or the statements conditions. No other contrasts reached significance. Experiment 2 employed delayed recall assessed one week after reading. The results confirmed those of Experiment 1. The overall results of the study are discussed in terms of an elaboration perspective on memory.     

以“最美精神”引领大学生核心价值观构建——基于台州学院的实践与思考

当代大学生的价值观主流是积极向上的,但价值观多元化趋势明显,部分学生知行脱节,存在矛盾和困惑。台州学院将学习＂最美精神＂与大学生实际思想状况结合,以先进的事迹感召人,以身边的榜样引导人,在实践活动中教育人,从而引导学生树立正确的价值观,实现＂争做精神富有的浙江青年＂。以＂最美精神＂引领大学生社会主义核心价值观构建,要坚持多元价值观中的＂一元指导＂、＂两个课堂＂教学和＂三个工作机制＂相结合。     

Conceptual explanations and understanding fraction comparisons

Explanations are used as indicators of understanding in mathematics, and conceptual explanations are often taken to signal deeper understanding of a domain than more superficial explanations. However, students who are able to produce a conceptual explanation in one problem or context may not be able to extend that understanding more generally. In this study we challenge the notion that conceptual explanations indicate general understanding by showing that – although conceptual explanations are strongly associated with correct answers – they are not employed equally across different contexts, and the highest performing students tend to use more general explanations, which may or may not be conceptual. Overall, our results suggest that explanations of fraction magnitudes follow a learning trajectory reflected in students’ accuracy and explanations: weak students focus on concrete, non-conceptual features, stronger students use concepts to explain their answers, and the highest performers tend to use general (but not necessarily conceptual) rules.     

Metacognition, need for cognition and use of explanations during ongoing learning and problem solving

Two studies assessed whether: (1) high levels of task-relevant metacognition would be related to good task performance; (2) some kinds of feedback (e.g., explanations) would improve task-relevant metacognition (and hence, performance) more than other kinds of feedback; and (3) some kinds of people would be more likely to seek out and use this beneficial feedback than others. Results showed that: (1) students were able to better estimate their task performance with increasing experience at the task; (2) students who provided better estimates of their task success were more successful at the task; (3) students high in need for cognition sought out problem explanations more often than students low in need for cognition; but (4) students who scored high in trait metacognition did not seek out problem explanations more often than students who scored low in trait metacognition; (5) students who were high in need for cognition performed better at the task than those who were low in need for cognition, and (6) the receipt of problem explanations was only weakly related to high levels of task performance, if at all. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Explaining the Third Reich: Swedish students' causal reasoning about the Nazi seizure of power in Germany

The topic of this study is how Swedish students aged 15–16 use causal reasoning in history when given a high-stakes task about explaining a historically significant event, the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany. The study is based on student texts from the Swedish national test in history. The student texts are mainly analysed with regards to how many, and what kinds of, causal factors are used by the students. The study finds that while most students are able to combine agents and situational factors in their explanations, the explanations show a recurring theme of combining a generic sense of economic crisis with Hitler and the German people as the important agents, to the detriment of other causes that could open up for different interpretations of why the Nazi regime came to power. To counteract this, the study suggests increased emphasis on some contextual factors in teaching practices.     

Fragments: the implications for teachers,learners and media users/researchers of personal construal and fragmentary recollection of aural and visual messages

A theory is advanced which proposes that when experience is recalled, it is recalled in fragments. The fragments are then woven logether to make a story about the experience, which is what is often called construal, or making sense. There are manifold implications of the theory: in the design of instruction which explicitly employs the theory in the ways in which students are invited to work on materials in different media; for assessment which explicitly calls upon fragment processing skills; for research into the effective use of educational media.     

Are instructional explanations more effective in the context of an impasse?

Effective instructional explanations help the students to construct coherent mental representations. To do so, one condition is that they must be tailored to students’ needs. It is hypothesized that explanations are more helpful if they also explicitly aid the students to detect problems in their mental representations, as this provokes an impasse that motivates students to process the explanation deeply. Participants were provided with a computer-based material on plate tectonics and then with explanatory support in the form of either a tailored explanation preceded by an impasse-trigger (I + E group) or an identical explanation without the impasse-trigger (noI + E group). After the reading of the materials they solved retention and transfer tests; their flawed ideas were also counted. Participants in the I + E group recalled more correct information, generated more transfer solutions, and showed fewer flawed ideas than those in the noI + E group. This indicates that tailored explanations combined with impasse-triggers that make explicit conflicts between the text model and the students′ models can indeed foster deep learning.     

'That's what scientists have to do': Preservice elementary teachers' conceptions of the nature of science during a moon investigation

In a science methods course for elementary education majors, students investigated the phases of the moon for six weeks. The moon investigation emphasized that scientific knowledge: a) is empirically based; b) involves the invention of explanations; and c) is socially embedded. After the moon investigation, students realized that scientists make observations and generate patterns, but failed to recognize that observation could precede or follow theory building. Students could separate the processes of observing from creating explanations in their learning, but did not articulate the role of invention in science. Similarly, students valued the social dimensions of learning, but were unable to apply them to the activity of scientists. Although our teaching was explicit about students' science learning, we did not help them make direct connections between their science learning activities and the nature of science [NOS]. We provide a set of recommendations for making the NOS more explicit in the moon investigation.     

The effect of tools of a computer microworld on students' strategies regarding the concept of conservation of area

This study focuses on the role oftools, provided by a computer microworld,(C.AR.ME) on the strategies developed by14-year-old students regarding the conceptof conservation of area of a non-convexpolygon. Students' strategies on atransformation and a comparison task wereinterpreted and classified into categoriesin terms of the tools used for thedevelopment of these tasks. The analysis ofthe data shows that the nature of the toolsused affected the nature of solutionstrategies that the students constructed.Three different approaches to the conceptof conservation of area emerged from thestrategies which were constructed by thestudents in this microworld: the intuitiveapproach involving the splitting of areasinto parts and recomposing them to produceequivalent areas, the enclosing of thenon-convex polygon in a minimum convexsuperset and the dynamic transformationapproach. Most students managed to use theabove approaches in combination therebyviewing the concept of conservation of areaas interrelated with the concept of areameasurement using spatial units and areaformulae. Almost all students experiencedqualitative aspects of the conservation ofarea through being involved in the processof splitting areas into parts andrecomposing them to produce equivalentareas. Most students experienced dynamicrepresentations of this concept throughexploring it in a variety of equivalentareas. Moreover, most students explored theconservation of area in classes ofequivalent parallelograms and triangles andthis illuminated serious difficulties, mostof which were overcome in this computerenvironment. Finally, the analysis of thedata shows that all students were involvedin the tasks and succeeded in completingthem with more than one correct solutionstrategy thereby developing a broader viewof the concept, although not all of themused the same strategies. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

《雨中的猫》:死亡的幽灵——析海明威作品中的神话原型和故事主题

《雨中的猫》是海明威的优秀短篇之一。该短篇自问世以来，出现了各种不同的、甚至相互矛盾的主题阐释．然而，应用神话原型批评方法，该短篇的深层主题则显现为死亡。作者实际上是通过表现这样的主题，抨击战争给人类带来的巨大灾难和危害．