When students learn scientific theories that conflict with their earlier, naïve theories, what
happens to the earlier theories? Are they overwritten or merely suppressed? We …

Common-sense intuitions can be useful guides in everyday life and problem solving.
However, they can also impede formal science learning and provide the basis for robust …

Critical evaluation underpins the practices of science. In a three-year classroom-based
research project, we developed and tested instructional scaffolds for Earth science content …

What is a teacher to do when confronted with a student who says “I understand that theory
(eg, evolution), but I don't believe it”? The purpose of this article is to provide a rationale for …

We hypothesized that instruction in the criteria of scientific arguments, in combination with
constructivist epistemic beliefs, would produce greater learning about physics concepts. The …

Science is of critical importance to daily life in a knowledge society and has a significant
influence on many everyday decisions. As scientific problems increase in their number and …

Among researchers who study students' epistemologies, a consensus has emerged about
what constitutes a sophisticated stance toward scientific knowledge. According to this …

It might seem contradictory to believe that humans were created in their present form at one
time within the past 10,000 years and at the same time believe that humans developed over …

Helping students better understand how scientists reason and argue to draw scientific
conclusions has long been viewed as a critical component of scientific literacy, thus remains …

This chapter discusses evidence from problem-solving case studies that indicates that
analogies and extreme cases can play important roles as forms of nonformal reasoning in …