In a survey of almost 600 high school chemistry teachers, it was found that almost half of them did not use inquiry in their classroom. For the survey, inquiry was defined as any lab in which students write the procedure themselves--the question/purpose/problem could be of the students' own design or provided for them. Many teachers indicated that…

The Gulf of Maine Institute (GOMI) is striving to empower youth to take on stewardship roles in their communities. Through its Community Based Initiative (CBI) program, GOMI addresses environmental degradation by working with teams of students, teachers, and community members from around the Gulf of Maine to inspire youth to be stewards of the…

Laboratory investigations are essential for the effective teaching and learning of science. A school laboratory investigation ("lab") is an experience in the laboratory, classroom, or the field that provides students with opportunities to interact directly with natural phenomena or with data collected by others using tools, materials, data…

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) recommends that schools and teacher preparation programs provide new teachers of science with comprehensive induction programs. Research suggests these programs should address specifics for teachers of science, involve trained mentors, provide adequate time to support continual learning of new…

For science to be taught properly and effectively, labs must be an integral part of the science curriculum. The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) recommends that all preK-16 teachers of science provide instruction with a priority on making observations and gathering evidence, much of which students experience in the lab or the field, to…

This inquiry uses teacher-candidate critiques of science lessons as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of an instructor's pedagogical approach to promote teacher candidate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) in a science methods course. Three cohorts of teacher candidates enrolled in a middle-years teacher education program were…

Preservice and inservice teachers were asked to examine 2 considerably different museum-based worksheets and to choose which, if any, they might use if they were conducting a science field trip for upper elementary or middle school students. The more detailed, survey-oriented worksheet was chosen more frequently than the open-ended,…

Although clean, potable groundwater constitutes one of our most valuable resources, few students or science educators hold complete and appropriate understandings regarding the concept. Recent studies that focus on secondary students' and preservice science teachers' understandings of groundwater found little difference between the groups'…

In this study, peer assessment was applied in assessing elementary science teaching skills. Preservice teachers taught a science topic as a team to their peers in an elementary science methods course. The peers participating in the science lesson assessed teacher-groups' elementary science teaching skills on an assessment form provided by the…

Drawing on the work of Dewey, we present a view of science education from the perspective of art and aesthetics. This perspective places a transformative, aesthetic experience at the forefront of educational objectives. Such experience involves the application of learning in everyday contexts, expansion of perception, and development of an…

The purpose of this study was to determine if teachers who participated in a professional development program continued to learn about inquiry and inquiry teaching as they implemented inquiry in their classrooms. A qualitative design utilizing inductive analysis was used to investigate teachers' understanding and classroom implementation of…

This study reports teachers' learning through action research on students' conceptual understanding. The study examined (a) the teachers' views about science teaching and learning, (b) the teachers' learning about their teaching practices and (c) the conditions that supported the teachers' learning through action research. A total of 14 elementary…

In this contribution we describe a short development course for in-service physics teachers. The course structure and materials are based on the results of educational research, and its main objective is to provide in-service teachers with a first contact with the active learning strategy "Tutorials in Introductory Physics," developed by the…

This paper describes a module provided to first year elementary participants in a two-year after-degree Bachelor of Education program. The module was specifically designed to address the fact that pre-service teachers can enter the B.Ed. degree with little or no science knowledge. Science experiences were explicitly incorporated into the B.Ed.…

As university professors we sought to disrupt the practice of giving our students the actions we felt they should imitate in their teaching practice. Instead, we sought to actively engage teachers in the creation of workable solutions to real-life problems. We accomplished this by conducting a participatory action research project. This paper…