Chin Cheng Chou

Diagnosing students' mental models via the Web-Based Mental Models Diagnosis system

Address for correspondence: Dr. Mei-Hung Chiu, Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University, 88, Sec 4 Ting-Chou Road Taipei 116, Taiwan. Email: mhchiu@ntnu.edu.tw. Dr. Tzu-Hua Wang, Department of Education, National HsinChu University of Education; Dr. Jing-Wen Lin, Department of Curriculum Design and Human Potentials Development, National Dong-Hwa University; Dr. Chin-Cheng Chou, College of General Education, HungKuang University.

Content Analysis of Conceptual Change Research and Practice in Science Education: From Localization to Globalization

This chapter reviews the current research on conceptual change in science education. The review includes research located in the DoRise system (Database of Research in Science Education) in Taiwan and articles published in selected international science education journals (Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, International Journal of Science Education, Research in Science Education, and International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education) between 1982 and 2012. Three hundred and eighty-three articles in the international journals (including 26 English papers from researchers in Taiwan) and eighty-six articles from Taiwan were analyzed (60 and 26 articles from Taiwanese and international journals, respectively). There are five major findings. First, most of the research follows the empirical approach, regardless of it being an international or national article. Second, physics was the main discipline examined both in the international and national studies. Third, about two thirds of the studies from outside of Taiwan used epistemological perspective to frame and present their study. A similar percentage of articles investigated the instructional perspective whereas nearly two thirds of the Taiwanese articles investigated the instructional perspective and only 28 % followed the epistemological perspective. Fourth, as for the research method, we found that qualitative data analysis was ranked first among all the methods we investigated whereas Taiwan appeared to integrate both quantitative and qualitative methods. Fifth, as expected, high percentages of published researchers were from English-speaking countries (i.e., the USA, Australia, and the UK). Taiwan was ranked third out of 31 countries with respect to the number of publications in this study from 1982 to 2012 but was the first non-English-speaking country. Recommendations for researchers and educators are provided.

Impacts of Citations on Conceptual Change Articles Between 1982 and 2011: From International and Regional Perspectives

The purpose of this book chapter is to investigate the impacts of research articles on conceptual change field via the analysis of citations listed in a set of selected journal articles. According to our screening processes, we found 365 articles in the selected science education journals (Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, International Journal of Science Education, Research in Science Education, International Journal of Mathematics and Science Education) and 17,919 citations were included in the articles. Out of 365, there were 78 articles that had Asian scholars as either the first author or the corresponding persons. Among them, there were 3710 citations in these Asian studies. From the analyses, we found that Posner et al. (Sci Educ 66(2): 211–227, 1982) was the most cited article across the world, followed by Strike and Posner (Cognitive structure and conceptual change. Academic Press, New York, pp. 211–231, 1992) and Pintrich et al. (Rev Educ Res 63(2): 167–199, 1993). However, there were some differences of the orderings of the cited research articles in Asia except the first one, Posner et al. (Sci Educ 66(2): 211–227, 1982). In terms of the authors, we found Driver as the most influential researcher in the area of conceptual change compared to others across the world. This holds true in Asia as well. However, the orderings of the cited authors were quite different between global and regional aspects. These findings might show specific preferences or impacts of research directions globally and locally. Detailed analyses and implications will be discussed.