Teaching and learning the concept of chemical bonding

Chemical bonding is one of the key and basic concepts in chemistry. The learning of many of the concepts taught in chemistry, in both secondary schools as well as in the colleges, is dependent upon understanding fundamental ideas related to chemical bonding. Nevertheless, the concept is perceived by teachers, as well as by learners, as difficult, with teaching commonly leading to students developing misconceptions. Many of these misconceptions result from over‐simplified models used in text books, by the use of traditional pedagogy that presents a rather limited and sometimes incorrect picture of the issues related to chemical bonding and by assessments of students' achievement that influence the way the topic is taught. In addition, there are discrepancies between scientists regarding key definitions in the topic and the most appropriate models to teach it. In particular, teaching models that are intended to have transitional epistemological value in introducing abstract ideas are often instead understood by students as accounts of ontological reality. In this review paper we provide science educators, curricula developers and pre‐service and in‐service professional development providers an up‐to‐date picture regarding research and developments in teaching about chemical bonding. We review the external and internal variables that might lead to misconceptions and the problematic issue of using limited teaching/learning models. Finally, we review the approaches to teaching the concept that might overcome some of these misconceptions.     

An investigation into the prevalence of ecological misconceptions in upper secondary students and implications for pre-service teacher education

Students’ and teachers’ misconceptions are an international concern among researchers in science education; they influence how students learn and teachers’ teach knowledge and are a hindrance in the acquisition of accurate knowledge. This paper reports on a literature synthesis of existing research about ecological misconceptions. One means of improving the application of misconceptions involves using diagnostic tests. These form an important component of a broader conceptual toolkit needed to teach science in conceptually accurate ways. Analysis of the results of a diagnostic test, completed by biology students and pre-service teachers in Ireland, revealed the presence of an unacceptably high level of misconceptions and uncovered flaws in students and teachers’ understanding of ecological concepts. A clear link was observed between the misconceptions present in pre-service teachers’ knowledge base and those dominant in students. In this regard, we discuss implications of these findings for teacher education, from pre-service to continuing education.     

Leveraging Play for Learning and Development: Incorporating Cultural-Evolutionary Insights into Early Educational Practices

There is a renewed scientific interest in the role of childhood in human evolution, pointing to the explorative phase of a human's life history that shapes how children learn and develop. This study presents a synthesis from evolutionary sciences that considers biases in childhood learning through activities in play, exploration, and social interactions. The study argues that childhood education based on this framework diverges from formal education. This framework explains why common misconceptions about childhood learning arise and how to resolve them. Finally, we propose how childhood education can be changed to take advantage of biological biases in learning.     

Misconceptions Are “So Yesterday!”

At the close of the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research conference in July 2012, one of the organizers made the comment: “Misconceptions are so yesterday.” Within the community of learning sciences, misconceptions are yesterday''s news, because the term has been aligned with eradication and/or replacement of conceptions, and our knowledge about how people learn has progressed past this idea. This essay provides an overview of the discussion within the learning sciences community surrounding the term “misconceptions” and how the education community''s thinking has evolved with respect to students’ conceptions. Using examples of students’ incorrect ideas about evolution and ecology, we show that students’ naïve ideas can provide the resources from which to build scientific understanding. We conclude by advocating that biology education researchers use one or more appropriate alternatives in place of the term misconception whenever possible.     

Mother-Child Interaction on a Spatial Concept Task as Mediated by Maternal Notions about the Task and the Child

This study examined how task context and task difficulty may affect the nature of mother-child instructional interactions. It also assessed the role of maternal views about these two factors. Mothers interacted with their 3-year-olds on a matching task tapping spatial relation concepts. Sixty-four dyads received either an easy or difficult version of the matching task presented either as a school-readiness task or as a board game. Mothers' awareness of the task concepts, their notions about task difficulty, and their ideas about their child's task-related abilities had as strong an effect on their teaching, and thus on their child's successful task completion, as did the actual task difficulty or task context. Thus, how and what mothers teach may well be influenced in significant ways by their judgments of task difficulty and child competence as well as the actual task requirements. These results have implications for how educators structure programs designed for adult-child dyads. Mothers will teach in accordance with their views of a task; however, they may be mistaken in their views. Thus, educators need to explicate task requirements so that mothers' notions are congruent with their own.     

BioCore Guide: A Tool for Interpreting the Core Concepts of Vision and Change for Biology Majors

Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education outlined five core concepts intended to guide undergraduate biology education: 1) evolution; 2) structure and function; 3) information flow, exchange, and storage; 4) pathways and transformations of energy and matter; and 5) systems. We have taken these general recommendations and created a Vision and Change BioCore Guide—a set of general principles and specific statements that expand upon the core concepts, creating a framework that biology departments can use to align with the goals of Vision and Change. We used a grassroots approach to generate the BioCore Guide, beginning with faculty ideas as the basis for an iterative process that incorporated feedback from more than 240 biologists and biology educators at a diverse range of academic institutions throughout the United States. The final validation step in this process demonstrated strong national consensus, with more than 90% of respondents agreeing with the importance and scientific accuracy of the statements. It is our hope that the BioCore Guide will serve as an agent of change for biology departments as we move toward transforming undergraduate biology education.

The intent of the Vision and Change conversations and national conference was to move toward a consensus framework in the biology community that would be broadly adaptable, given the unique structures, capacities, and constraints of individual life sciences programs … We pose these core concepts … as a resource and starting point based on the collective experience and wisdom of a broad national community of biological scientists and educators.Vision and Change (AAAS, 2011 , p. 11)

Biology is without question the most diverse of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. What began as an observational science has blossomed into a wide-ranging set of subdisciplines, each with its own set of key concepts, experimental techniques, and approaches to the study of life. The discipline is currently so segmented that biologists who work in particular subdisciplines attend separate scientific meetings, publish in specialty journals, and are sometimes housed in different departments.The rapid expansion and increased diversity of the field has greatly expanded the scope and impact of biological discoveries but creates a challenge for instructors. The exponential rate of discovery in biology makes it difficult to decide what to teach in a 4-yr undergraduate curriculum. Given that we cannot teach everything, can we reach consensus about what is most important to teach?     

In Physics Education,Perception Matters

Student difficulties in science learning are frequently attributed to misconceptions about scientific concepts. We argue that domain‐general perceptual processes may also influence students' ability to learn and demonstrate mastery of difficult science concepts. Using the concept of center of gravity (CoG), we show how student difficulty in applying CoG to an object such as a baseball bat can be accounted for, at least in part, by general principles of perception (i.e., not exclusively physics‐based) that make perceiving the CoG of some objects more difficult than others. In particular, it is perceptually difficult to locate the CoG of objects with asymmetric‐extended properties. The basic perceptual features of objects must be taken into account when assessing students' classroom performance and developing effective science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching methods.     

Learning to read in Australia

Abstract

Reading scientists have learned a good deal over the past 40 years about how children learn to read, why some find this so hard, and how such children can be helped. But this science has not reached many classrooms. National governments in the USA, UK and Australia have all recently been so concerned about the incidence of poor reading ability amongst their children that they have commissioned national surveys of reading and the teaching of reading. The Australian review committee issued its report and recommendations in December 2005. The report found that in most teacher training courses around Australia very little time was devoted to material on how children learn to read and how best to teach them, and that a majority of senior staff in schools consider that beginning teachers are not adequately prepared to teach children to read. The report recommended various ways in which this problem might be solved; and it also recommended, on the basis of a review of relevant research, that the teaching of reading in Australian schools should always include in the early years extensive systematic explicit instruction in synthetic phonics. We await implementation of these recommendations.     

高校生物化学课程教学改革探索——以临沂大学为例

生物化学是生命科学领域的一门基础而核心的课程,涉及概念多且知识抽象,"教"和"学"相对较难。文章以临沂大学生命科学学院为例,通过优化教学内容、调整教学方式、改革实践教学、增加教学评价渠道以及设置"N+1+1"考核模式,对高校生物化学课程的教学进行探索并逐步形成自己的特色,以期全面提高学生的知识、技能和创新能力。     

Understanding How the Arts Can Enhance Learning

Understanding how the arts can enhance learning has long been discussed and debated among educators, students, parents, artists, art historians, and philosophers. Many anecdotal examples reference the value and benefits of the arts in a range of fields and learning domains. Emerging methodologies in the brain sciences have added new perspectives and research‐based approaches to better understand the role the arts might play in learning. Psychologists, cognitive scientists, and now neuroscientists are approaching this topic by exploring memory, sensory systems, and other biological measures. The interdisciplinary and potentially interdependence of these fields to work together to identify the neurological mechanisms involved in the arts may offer educators, parents, and child care providers with important information about how we learning takes place. By bringing together uncommon and divergent thinking from a wide range of disciplines, there is an opportunity to change the way we teach, parent, and serve children using the arts to help enhance learning. This issue of Mind, Brain, and Education celebrates the range of approaches that are emerging to shed light and insight in this field.     

Misconceptions Reconceived: A Constructivist Analysis of Knowledge in Transition

This article uses a critical evaluation of research on student misconceptions in science and mathematics to articulate a constructivist view of learning in which student conceptions play productive roles in the acquisition of expertise. We acknowledge and build on the empirical results of misconceptions research but question accompanying views of the character, origins, and growth of students' conceptions. Students have often been viewed as holding flawed ideas that are strongly held, that interfere with learning, and that instruction must confront and replace. We argue that this view overemphasizes the discontinuity between students and expert scientists and mathematicians, making the acquisition of expertise difficult to conceptualize. It also conflicts with the basic premise of constructivism: that students build more advanced knowledge from prior understandings. Using case analyses, we dispute some commonly cited dimensions of discontinuity and identify important continuities that were previously ignored or underemphasized. We highlight elements of knowledge that serve both novices and experts, albeit in different contexts and under different conditions. We provide an initial sketch of a constructivist theory of learning that interprets students' prior conceptions as resources for cognitive growth within a complex systems view of knowledge. This theoretical perspective aims to characterize the interrelationships among diverse knowledge elements rather than identify particular flawed conceptions; it emphasizes knowledge refinement and reorganization, rather than replacement, as primary metaphors for learning; and it provides a framework for understanding misconceptions as both flawed and productive.     

Learning natural selection through computational thinking: Unplugged design of algorithmic explanations

Computational thinking (CT) is a way of making sense of the natural world and problem solving with computer science concepts and skills. Although CT and science integrations have been called for in the literature, empirical investigations of such integrations are lacking. Prior work in natural selection education indicates students struggle to explain natural selection in different contexts and natural selection misconceptions are common. In this mixed methods study, secondary honors biology students learn natural selection through CT by engaging in the design of unplugged algorithmic explanations. Students learned CT principles and practices and applied them to learn and explain the natural selection process. Algorithmic explanations were used to scaffold transfer of natural selection knowledge across contexts through investigation of three organisms and the creation of generalized natural selection algorithms. Students' pre- and post-unit algorithmic explanations of natural selection were analyzed to answer the following research questions: (a) How do students' conceptions of natural selection change over the course of a CT focused unit? (b) What is the relationship between CT and natural selection in students' algorithmic explanations? (c) What are students' perspectives of learning natural selection with CT? Results indicate students' conceptions of natural selection increased and natural selection misconceptions decreased over the course of the unit. Within their post-unit algorithmic explanations, students used specific CT principles in conjunction with natural selection concepts to explain natural selection, which helped them to learn the details of the natural selection process and correct their natural selection misconceptions. Students indicated the use of CT in unplugged algorithmic explanations in different contexts helped them learn natural selection. This study shows unplugged CT can be used to teach students science content, and it provides an example for further CT and science integrations. Implications for the field are discussed.     

Towards an understanding of neuroscience for science educators

Advances in neuroscience have brought new insights to the development of cognitive functions. These data are of considerable interest to educators concerned with how students learn. This review documents some of the recent findings in neuroscience, which is richer in describing cognitive functions than affective aspects of learning. A brief overview is presented here of the techniques used to generate data from imaging and how these findings have the possibility to inform educators. There are implications for considering the impact of neuroscience at all levels of education – from the classroom teacher and practitioner to policy. This relatively new cross-disciplinary area of research implies a need for educators and scientists to engage with each other. What questions are emerging through such dialogues between educators and scientists are likely to shed light on, for example, reward, motivation, working memory, learning difficulties, bilingualism and child development. The sciences of learning are entering a new paradigm.     

识解机制与英语近义词的教学——以课文The Libido for the Ugly中的词语为例

英语近义词是英语教学中的难点,如何让学生了解不同近义词之间的区别是一个让人棘手的问题。从认知语言学的识解机制入手,探讨英语近义词的教学。     

面向新工科的“信号与系统”教学及课程思政探讨

“信号与系统”在电子信息类基础课教学体系中起着承上启下的作用,该课程具有概念多、理论抽象、方法多样、求解难等问题,历来是教师难教、学生难学的一门课程。面向新工科需求,对如何进行线上线下混合式教学及课程思政方法进行了探讨,旨在从课程知识点及相关思想引出课程思政内容,引导学生树立正确的世界观和方法论,进而调动学生学习的主动性,最终达到既改善教学效果、又实现教书育人的目的。     

谈如何让新入学大学生学好高等数学

中学数学与高数有明显的差别,授课的方式和学习方法在一定程度上也都发生了变化。对于新入学的大学生来说,想要从比较简单的、基础性的中学数学思维模式转到抽象又复杂的高数学习中难度较大。因此,要帮助新入学大学生适应这种新的变化,教会他们学会如何听课,引导学生掌握基本概念,做好预习、复习,以适应新的环境,学习好高等数学。     

Teachers' concepts in science

Conclusion The basic assumption underlying this study is that science teachers have misconceptions in some selected science concepts. The overall conclusion which can be drawn is that, although the responses were not consistent across the concepts or within the concepts, there are indeed misconceptions. The result is evidence that the graduate trainee teachers have misconceptions in science. The results show that the view of science held by this group of trainee teachers is sometimes little better than the view of science held by students investigated by Osborne et al. The test appears appropriate for use with science teachers. What do these results imply? They suggest that science teachers may have concepts which are little better than the students they teach. If that is the case, then, is it reasonable to urge teachers to probe their students' concepts before teaching them? Should science educators then redirect their efforts in conceptual change to changing teachers' views before changing students' views?     

Discovering Plate Boundaries in Data-integrated Environments: Preservice Teachers' Conceptualization and Implementation of Scientific Practices

Drawn from the norms and rules of their fields, scientists use variety of practices, such as asking questions and arguing based on evidence, to engage in research that will contribute to our understanding of Earth and beyond. In this study, we explore how preservice teachers' learn to teach scientific practices while teaching plate tectonic theory. In particular, our aim is to observe which scientific practices preservice teachers use while teaching an earth science unit, how do they integrate these practices into their lessons, and what challenges do they face during their first time teaching of an earth science content area integrated with scientific practices. The study is designed as a qualitative, exploratory case study of seven preservice teachers while they were learning to teach plate tectonic theory to a group of middle school students. The data were driven from the video records and artifacts of the preservice teachers' learning and teaching processes as well as written reflections on the teaching. Intertextual discourse analysis was used to understand what scientific practices preservice teachers choose to integrate into their teaching experience. Our results showed that preservice teachers chose to focus on four aspects of scientific practices: (1) employing historical understanding of how the theory emerged, (2) encouraging the use of evidence to build up a theory, (3) observation and interpretation of data maps, and (4) collaborative practices in making up the theory. For each of these practices, we also looked at the common challenges faced by preservice teachers by using constant comparative analysis. We observed the practices that preservice teachers decided to use and the challenges they faced, which were determined by what might have come as in their personal history as learners. Therefore, in order to strengthen preservice teachers' background, college courses should be arranged to teach important scientific ideas through scientific practices. In addition, such practices should also reflect the authentic practices of earth scientists such as use of historical record and differentiating observation versus interpretation.