The objective of this study was to examine middle school students' developing understanding of the nature of matter and to compare middle school students' ideas to those of elementary schools students, as was done by Nakhleh and Samarapungavan [J Res Sci Teach 36 (7): 1999]. Nine middle school students were interviewed using a scripted, semistructured interview. The interview probed students' understanding of the composition and particulate (atomic/molecular) structure of a variety of material substances; the relationship between particulate structure and macroscopic properties such as fluidity and malleability; as well as understanding of processes such as phase transition and dissolving. The results indicate that most of the middle school students interviewed knew that matter was composed of atoms and molecules and some of them were able to use this knowledge to explain some processes such as phase transitions of water. In contrast, almost no elementary students knew that matter was composed of atoms and molecules. However, the middle school students were unable to consistently explain material properties or processes based on their knowledge of material composition. In contrast to elementary school students, who had scientifically inaccurate but relatively consistent (macrocontinuous or macroparticulate) knowledge frameworks, the middle school students could not be classified as having consistent knowledge frameworks because their ideas were very fragmented. The fragmentation of middle school students' ideas about matter probably reflects the difficulty of assimilating the microscopic level scientific knowledge acquired through formal instruction into students' initial macroscopic knowledge frameworks. ß 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 2005 This study is part of an ongoing project to examine students' acquisition of knowledge in a specific domain of science, the nature of matter. Within this domain, our particular interest is in investigating students' macroscopic and microscopic understanding of the particulate nature of matter. Our study focuses on students' understandings of the macroscopic and microscopic Correspondence to: M.B. Nakhleh;
The study aimed to investigate whether classroom norm perspective influence the students' capability of elucidating a natural phenomena and beliefs about scientific explanation. In particular, our objective was to explore the process by which the norm for scientific explanation was established and discover how the students' explanation and their beliefs about scientific explanation altered in this process. A case study approach was adopted and a total of 51 students participated in the study. The data has included videotapes of classroom periods for an entire school semester, individual interviews with the students conducted at the beginning and at the end of the semester, and students' written responses collected in the middle and at the end of the semester in the year of 2012. In creating a sociocultural norm for scientific explanation, the teacher, in the class, was seen declaring his own expectation, negotiating the meaning by making comments on and legitimizing students' accounts, and calling the students' attention towards the important parts of an acceptable explanation. The results indicated that towards the end of the semester, the students' explanation and their beliefs about scientific explanation have considerably improved.
This study aimed to investigate the impacts of contextual factors on the use of students' conceptions. A total of 106 students received a questionnaire involving openended questions on acid-base and equilibrium concepts. Of these students, 16 students who provided complete and accurate responses to the questions participated in an interview. In order to observe the effects of different contexts, in the interview, the conception of acid-base was probed in an equilibrium system. As a result, the students' utterances indicated that (1) a specific problem situation could activate a different part(s) of a concept image, (2) an evoked concept image perfectly working in a particular context could become inadequate in a broader one, and (3) a misconception that could not be observed in a particular context might surface itself in a different one. The results further pointed to the fact that our current definitions and descriptions for acids and bases could be one of the sources of these misconceptions.
The study aimed to explore the impact of an SDM-based professional development program on teacher discourse. Two types of discourse, authoritative and dialogic discourses, was the focus of the search. From a Bakhtinian standpoint, authoritative words are viewed as located in a distanced zone, do not reflect any individual point of view, and are not disputable. Moreover, in these words, one hears only one, single voice. Whereas, internally persuasive (dialogic) words are freely developed, applicable to new material and conditions, and, in these words, one hears at least two voices. A total of seventeen teachers volunteered and participated in a four-week professional development program. The program provided information about and classroom uses of authoritative and dialogic talk. After the program had been fulfilled, the classroom activities were videotaped and then transcribed. The transcriptions were later analyzed deductively. The results indicated that the SDMbased program had a positive and statistically significant impact on teacher dialogic discourse. The analysis revealed that after the program, all the teachers altered their discourse to a more dialogic one. It was specifically observed that a total of eleven teachers' dialogic-authoritative talk ratio was over 7/3.
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