Reports on a case study that used archival and contemporary source materials in project activities. Analyzes the curricular science activities as students build and use archives of historical and contemporary naturalist materials. Discusses the feasibility and benefits of using historical source materials in elementary science education. (Contains…

Draws upon the findings of a qualitative study that examines the valued capital, ways, and practices of a support group for women working in the sciences at an academic research institution. Discusses how women were given little access to powerful networks in science and encountered many obstacles in their attempts to develop networks. (Contains…

Assesses ideational networks based on a written narrative of seventh grade students who had begun a unit on evolution. Indicates that students who scored high on the content analyses of their written narrative and whose narrative contained extensive ideational network linkages also tended to use a logical, sequential rule of ordering their…

Proposes a model of teacher knowledge situated in school science teaching that is the synthesis of a number of models, metaphors, and notions. Uses this model to examine the ways in which science teachers design and implement science lessons. Indicates that the model is sufficiently robust enough to provide simple and rapid yet effective and…

Explores families' engagement with their children's science and technology learning at home over a 6-month period, and illuminates both the nature and the educational significance of what families do. Indicates that families are engaged with children's inquiries at home in many ways such as providing resources, conversing, and investigating…

Explores the effectiveness of concept mapping, the learning cycle, expository instruction, and a combination of concept mapping/learning cycle in promoting conceptual understanding of diffusion and osmosis. Concludes that the concept mapping/learning cycle and concept mapping treatment groups significantly outperformed the expository treatment…

Reports on a survey undertaken to test teacher perception of the effectiveness of their teaching of an earth science component which was added to the National Curriculum of England and Wales in 1989. Teachers indicated that the achievement of their pupils in earth science is moderate while reports on national testing show that it is poor.…

Investigates the role of complex instructional analogies on concept acquisition in an introductory college genetics course. An experimental treatment included complex instructional analogies. A control group received expository instruction alone. Finds significant differences in student achievement in favor of the experimental group. (Author/MM)

Reports on a study designed to: (a) understand the nature of science as progressive transitions in heuristic principles; and (b) provide a rationale for the inclusion of three more characteristics of the nature of science to the original five suggested by Smith and Scharmann. Concludes that nature of science manifests in different topics of the…

Responds to "Understanding Nature of Science as Progressive Transitions in Heuristic Principles" by Mansoor Niaz. Concludes that the historical vignettes provided by Niaz provide interesting insights into the nature of science but that the proposed characterizations do not help distinguish things that are more scientific from things that are less…

Examines the way in which students cooperate in Taiwanese and Australian science classrooms. Concludes that students from Taiwan and Australia have a range of understandings and interpretations about what it means to cooperate in science classrooms. There are complex connections between cooperative behavior, student academic ability, sex, and…

Reports on a study of parent-child interactions in a children's museum demonstrating that parents shape and support children's scientific thinking in everyday, nonobligatory activity. Finds that when children engaged an exhibit with their parents, their exploration of evidence was observed to be longer, broader, and more focused on relevant…

Reports on a study designed to document and interpret ways in which prospective teachers engage in pedagogical inquiries and use their findings as a basis for learning to teach courses on methods of teaching science in elementary schools. Suggests that these prospective elementary school teachers had prior knowledge of science learning and…

Describes the development, application, and evaluation of a metacognitive technique for improving student reading comprehension of physics texts. Recommends that the metacognitive technique be developed and applied in teaching reading comprehension of physics texts as an effective self-monitoring device. (Author/MM)

Ethical issues concerning pain and suffering of animals are necessarily a consideration in killing pest or feral species in Australia, but ethical issues are reduced to a secondary consideration and appear to be at odds with scientific agendas. Suggests that a greater understanding of various perspectives on the subject of environmental ethics may…