Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-109).

This study describes first and second year university physics students' understanding and reasoning of the concepts, angular speed and angular acceleration. The analysis was based on student responses to various tasks presented to them during one hour long interviews. These responses were characterized from a phenomeno graphic research perspective developed by Marton (1981) and his colleagues at Gothenburg University in Sweden. The findings of the study are described by categories of description and by categories of reasoning. Categories of description characterize; students' conceptualizations of angular speed from different frames of reference, and the ways in which students make comparisons of the angular speeds of two objects. Categories of reasoning characterize the ways in which students were thought to reason about the concepts of angular speed and angular acceleration in several task settings. Interpretation of these findings are discussed with reference to the role a typical introductory physics textbook may have had in shaping the way in which students think about these angular kinematic concepts. Finally, instructional implications and directions for future research are given.

Thesis (M.Info.Sys.)--University of Wollongong, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 247-254.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1963. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: Safe headway learning plays a core role in driving education. Traditional safe headway education just use the oral and literal methods to educate drivers the concept of safe headway time, while with the limitation of combining drivers subject and situational domains for drivers to learn. This study investigated that whether using ego-moving metaphor to embody driver's self-awareness can help to solve this problem. This study used multiple treatments (ego-moving and time-moving instruction of safe time headway) and controls with pretest experimental design to investigate the embody self-awareness effect in a car-following task. Drivers (N=40) were asked to follow a lead car at a 2-seconds safe time headway. Results found that using embodied-based instructions in safe headway learning can help to improve driver's headway time accuracy and performance stability in the car-following task, which supports the hypothesis that using embodied-based instructions help to facilitate safe headway learning. However, there are still some issues needed to be solved using embodied-based instructions for the drivers' safe headway education. This study serves as a new method for the safe headway education while providing empirical evidence for the embodied theories and their applications. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Applied Psychology 2016

This study describes first and second year university physics students' understanding and reasoning of the concepts, angular speed and angular acceleration. The analysis was based on student responses to various tasks presented to them during one hour long interviews. These responses were characterized from a phenomeno graphic research perspective developed by Marton (1981) and his colleagues at Gothenburg University in Sweden. The findings of the study are described by categories of description and by categories of reasoning. Categories of description characterize; students' conceptualizations of angular speed from different frames of reference, and the ways in which students make comparisons of the angular speeds of two objects. Categories of reasoning characterize the ways in which students were thought to reason about the concepts of angular speed and angular acceleration in several task settings. Interpretation of these findings are discussed with reference to the role a typical introductory physics textbook may have had in shaping the way in which students think about these angular kinematic concepts. Finally, instructional implications and directions for future research are given. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Concept mapping is a metacognitive learning strategy which often improves a learner's ability to construct new knowledge. This action research project was intended to determine the level of effectiveness of concept mapping as a student learning intervention. Students in two high school science classes constructed concept maps before and after instruction during a unit of study about volcanoes. The maps were analyzed for increases in complexity and indications of learning. The concept maps were then compared for differences by groups based on volcano unit test scores. Based on the analysis of the matched pairs of concept maps, those maps which contained a higher amount of prior knowledge of the subject matter were associated with maps which showed greatest amount of increase in knowledge after instruction. These results are supported by the many researchers who contend that the most important factor in learning new information and gaining new knowledge is the amount of prior knowledge a learner brings into the learning situation. The results of this action research project will be applied to the development of future science courses by this researcher.

In the context of the Semantic Web, ontologies based on Description Logics are gaining more and more importance for knowledge representation on a large scale. While the need arises for high quality ontologies with large background knowledge to enable powerful machine reasoning, the acquisition of such knowledge is only advancing slowly, because of the lack of appropriate tools. Concept learning algorithms have made a great leap forward and can help to speed up knowledge acquisition in the form of induced concept descriptions. This work investigated whether concept learning algorithms have reached a level on which they can produce results that can be used in an ontology engineering process. Two learning algorithms (YinYang and DL-Learner) are investigated in detail and tested with benchmarks. A method that enables concept learning on large knowledge bases on a SPARQL endpoint is presented and the quality of learned concepts is evaluated in a real use case. A proposal is made to increase the complexity of learned concept descriptions by circumventing the Open World Assumption of Description Logics.

Bibliography: p. 675-681. / This study, the first of its kind in Southern Africa, was undertaken in order to determine and compare the incidence of various alternate conceptions in some areas in mechanics amongst pupils from standards 4 through to 9, i.e. from ages ca. 11 to 17, in selected schools in the Western Cape and Transkei, South Africa. After a careful study of the relevant literature a questionnaire was designed for the purpose of identifying the frequency of various alternate conceptions in the selected areas in mechanics. This questionnaire was administered to 2326 pupils under carefully controlled conditions during August and September 1987. In analysing the data the frequency of particular alternate conceptions in the following groups of pupils were compared: (i) by school standard (ii) by geographical area (iii) by language group (iv) by gender (v) by urban and rural regions in the Cape (vi) by subject choice i.e. science pupils and non-science pupils An analysis of the data shows that in most of the areas in the field investigated remarkably small differences exist in the frequency with which different alternate conceptions are held by different groups of pupils. In most cases differences could be related to the pupils' school standard. However, in the fields of circular motion, projectile motion and static equilibrium, clear differences were found to exist between boys and girls as well as between pupils in schools in the Western Cape and Transkei. Furthermore, in most cases examined the accepted scientific conception was the least popular, particularly in the field of force and motion where conceptions linking force and motion were overwhelmingly selected by pupils in all of the groups. However, an exception was the standard 9 science pupils, i.e. 16- 17 year olds following the science course in high school, who in some cases favour the accepted scientific conceptions by a small majority. The implications of the findings of the study for classroom teaching are discussed.

The primary purpose of the investigation was to compare the responses of white, lower-class kindergartners and first graders with white, middle-class kindergartners and first graders on the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts (BTBC) in order to determine if a statistically significant difference existed between socioeconomic level and the number of concepts correctly identified on the BTBC. A secondary purpose was to determine is a significant relationship existed between concept development as measure by the BTBC and intelligence from an assessment of receptive vocabulary by using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). One hundred white, lower middle socioeconomic level children from two elementary schools in Portland were selected as subjects to be included in this study. Variable controlled were grade level, auditory acuity, emotional stability, and sooioeconomioc status. The BTBC consists of fifty pictorial items, arranged in approximate order of difficulty and divided evenly between two booklets. Included in the fifty items are twenty-three spatial concepts, four time concepts, eighteen quantity concepts, and five concepts classified as miscellaneous. The PPVT was used to provide an estimate of subject’s verbal intelligence though a measurement of his receptive vocabulary. On both tests, the subject was instructed to point to the picture representing the stimulus item. The results of this study revealed a relationship exists between socioeconomic status and the number of concepts correctly identified on the BTBC. This relationship was observed when the lower-class subjects were compared with their middle-class peers at each grade level, when all kindergarteners were compared to all first graders, and in a comparison of the fifty lower-class and fifty middle-class subjects. The subjects of the middle socioeconomic level tended to identify more concepts correctly than the subjects of the lower socioeconomic level, while the first grade subjects, generally, identified more concepts correctly than the kindergartners. An analysis of the conceptual areas of space, time, and quantity revealed that socioeconomic status was related to the number of concepts correctly identified when the fifty lower-class subjects were compared to the fifty middle-class subjects. The children of the middle-class identified more concepts correctly in each area than the lower-class subjects. Grade level also was related to the number of concepts correctly identified in each of' the concept areas. The first graders tended to identify more concepts in each area than the kindergarteners. When the scores of the lower- and middleclass subjects at the kindergarten level were compared, there was no relationship between socioeconomic status and the number of concepts correctly identified in each of the three areas. No relationship was observed between the scores of the two groups of first graders on the spatial concepts. Socioeconomic level, however, did effect the number of time and quantity concepts correctly identified. The subjects of the middle socioeconomic level, generally, identified more time and quantity concepts correctly than the subjects of the lower socioeconomic level. These results suggest a higher .degree of abstraction abilities may be found with increased age and a higher socioeconomic level. The findings also tend to support the views of many researchers in the field of conceptual development who have stated that the language of the disadvantaged child inhibits his ability to abstract. Results of a Pearson's Product-Moment correlation calculated between the subjects’ scores on each of the tests indicated no significant correlation between the children's I.Q. scores and the number of concepts correctly identified.