| Budget Amount *help |
¥4,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥4,800,000)
Fiscal Year 1995: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 1994: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1993: ¥3,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Scientific theories and models and students' personal theories and models often conflict sharply with one another. The students' personal theories and models may incorporate many misconceptions about the way the world works.
Even if students are confronted with what appear to be contradictions to the teacher, they will not necessarily recognize them. In addition, we will see that the same child may have different conceptions of a particular type of phenomenon, sometimes using different arguments leading to opposite predictions in situations which are equivalent from a scientist's point of view, and even switching from one sort of explanation to another for the same phenomenon.
Leading, the process of acquiring new knowledge, is active and complex. This process is the result of an active interaction of key cognitive processes, such as perception, imagery, organization, and elaboration. These processes facilitate the construction of conceptual relations.
Electricity is a difficult subject. Many students will freely admit that they never understood it.
In their study of electrical phenomena students are asked to reason in terms of abstract notions such as current, voltage and energy. They experience great difficulty in differentiating between the concepts in this subject area.
Students' minds are not blank slates able to receive instruction in a neutral way ; on the contrary, students approach experiences presented in science classes with previously acquired notions and these influence what is learnt from new experiences in a number of ways. These include the observations made of events, the interpretations offered for such observations and the strategies students use to acquire new information, including reading form texts and exprimentation.
Our research has revealed that some of the students models, once formed.tend to be resistant to change through instruction, however, teachers counteract misconceptions and facilitate conceptual change.
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