This study of teacher effectiveness and student achievement in science demonstrated that effective teachers positively impact student learning. A general linear mixed model was used to assess change in student scores on the Discovery Inquiry Test as a function of time, race, teacher effectiveness, gender, and impact of teacher effectiveness in…

D. Klahr and M. Nigam (2004) make a case for the superiority of direct instruction over discovery learning in students' mastery of the control-of-variables strategy central to the scientific method. In the present work, we examine acquisition of this strategy among students of the same age as those studied by Klahr and Nigam, as well as follow…

Modeling is being used in teaching learning science in a number of ways. It will be considered here as a process whereby children of primary school age exercise their capacity of organizing recognizable and manageable forms during their understanding of complex phenomenologies. The aim of this work is to characterize this process in relation to…

Researchers are becoming aware of the influence of students' presuppositions in directing their construction of science concepts. When these are entrenched and drastically nonscientific, they predispose the children to alternative explanatory frameworks that are inhibiting, especially in a knowledge domain such as genetics. In this study, we…

The article grapples with the question of how much curriculum change is appropriate in a given context and in a given time frame. How can a balance be struck between stagnation, on the one hand, and the promotion of unrealistic innovation on the other? In answer to this dilemma, the concept of a zone of feasible innovation (ZFI) is proposed and…

We describe a longitudinal study of a secondary education biology teacher at two moments in her career (1993-2002), determining the changes in her conceptions of the nature of science and its teaching and learning, and the factors that favored or hindered such changes. The changes were analyzed using cognitive maps, constructed on the basis of the…

Two elementary certified middle school science teachers are studied for changes in practical knowledge supporting the implementation of kit-based inquiry as part of a schoolwide reform effort. Emphasis is placed on studying how these two pilot teachers enact guided inquiry within their unique pedagogical and curricular interests, and what…

Descriptions of student-identified benefits of undergraduate research experiences are drawn from analysis of 76 first-round student interviews gathered at the end of summer 2000 at four participating liberal arts colleges (Grinnell, Harvey Mudd, Hope, and Wellesley). As part of the interview protocol, students commented on a checklist of possible…

Within the already limited literature on instructional practices in detracked classrooms, there are even fewer research-based studies of detracked science classrooms. This article attempts to address this gap in the research literature, delving into the unique challenges and instructional responses to teaching detracked science. The authors report…

Thirty fourth-grade students participated in an extended intervention previously successful in fostering skills of scientific investigation and inference, notably control of variables (COV). The intervention was similarly successful for a majority of students in the present study, enabling them to isolate the three causal and two noncausal…

Concepts and findings from research on identity development are employed to better understand why current science teacher preparation programs are failing to prepare teachers who are able and choose to implement the vision for science education articulated in professional standards. Identity theory is used as a theoretical lens to make sense of…

This study describes an example of design-based research in which we make theoretical improvements in our understanding, in part based on empirical work, and use these to revise our curriculum and, simultaneously, our evolving theory of the relations between contexts and disciplinary formalisms. Prior to this study, we completed a first cycle of…

Informed by literature on childhood expertise in high-interest topics and parent-child conversation in museum settings, this study explored how children's level of dinosaur expertise influences family learning opportunities in a natural history museum. Interviews identified children with high and low dinosaur knowledge and assigned them to expert…

Engagement has been viewed as an important construct to understand students' learning performances in classroom settings. Taking an interactive perspective, the study investigates ninth graders' cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement in teacher-centered (TC) and student-centered (SC) technology-enhanced classrooms. 54 students from two…

This study examined how 16 Black, Latina, and American Indian women science students reacted to their undergraduate science classes. I focused on the meanings they made of the common features of university science documented by Seymour and Hewitt (1997), including large, competitive, fast-paced classes, poor teaching, and an unsupportive culture.…