Traditional science instruction in the United States, refined by decades of work, has been shown to be largely ineffective in altering student understandings of the physical world. Even at the university level, students who take physics courses, whether they be science majors or not, enter and leave the courses with fundamental misunderstandings of the world about them essentially intact: their learning of facts about science remains within the classroom and has no effect on their thinking about the larger physical world. There is evidence that listening to someone talk about scientific facts and results is not an effective means of developing concepts. The evidence shows that students of all ages learn science better by actively participating in the investigation and the interpretation of physical phenomena and that well-designed computer-based pedagogical tools that allow students to gather, analyze, visualize, model and communicate data can aid students who are actively working to understand science.
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