ABSTRACT
This collection of papers ranges across a broad spectrum of topics. Miller and Lubben tackle the often overlooked question of how to teach and learn about the methods and procedures of scientific enquiry. It is perhaps only recently, in the UK anyway, that there has been a realization that this area of students’ understanding is not ‘caught’, but has to be taught and learned. Benloch and Pozo examine the persistence of students’ conceptual understandings and ideas with age in the face of instruction. Watson and Dillon also look at the issue of the progression in pupils’ understanding describing changes over time in their explanations of phenomena and the concomitant pedagogical implications. Lichtfeldt looks at the development of pupils’ cognitive structures and understandings as they progress along the ‘pathways to an atom-idea’. Mashhadi takes us into the area of students’ comprehension of the concepts of quantum physics asking mind-numbing questions like ‘Are electrons particles or waves?’ Lock picks up the gauntlet of the teaching of controversial issues, looking at student attitudes to, and knowledge about, the highly current areas of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering. These papers are perhaps bound together by their obvious enthusiasm for the search for ways to make things clearer for students-and for us, the readers of their work.
