Describes how research apprenticeships shaped high school students' (n=27) views of the culture and practice of science. Finds four dimensions of science--technical language, collaboration, uncertainty, and inquiry--whose salience and complexity increased among student interviewees over a seven-week period. Contains 33 references. (Author/WRM)

Presents a new way of framing scientific literacy with a "science for all" goal based on a nexus of psychological, sociological, and critical literacy theory. Finds the use of affirmational-dialog journal writing to be successful for high school students in a community with lower socioeconomic status. Contains 42 references. (Author/WRM)

Describes a physics course designed to engage preservice elementary teachers in the practices and discourses of science through activities that would later be used with children. Presents an account of preservice teachers' progress in inventing and testing models, working with empirical data, critically evaluating and using authoritative sources,…

Reports on an investigation of young children's (n=15) spontaneously constructed or naive understanding of the particulate nature of matter to any formal instruction in the domain. Speculates that children first develop local frameworks particular to different classes of substances, then slowly expand those frameworks to include a wide range of…

Presents a theory of learning in science based on students deriving conceptual linkages among multiple models which represent physical phenomena at different levels of abstraction. Finds that high school students who were exposed to derivational links among three models for basic electricity performed better when solving both qualitative and…

Describes a study of college students who designed and conducted experiments involving control of variables after being assigned to one of four versions of a computer-based biology simulation learning environment. Finds that reason-justification prompts directed students' attention to understanding the employment of experimental design principles…

Investigates the conceptual-change process in grade 10 students during a computer-supported physics unit. Finds that many students vacillated between alternative and scientific conceptions from one context to another during instruction, and those few students who did exhibit context-independent and stable conceptual change appeared able to accept…

Investigates the practices required for reading graphs in high school textbooks and scientific journals. Discusses the role of high school textbooks in the appropriation of authentic scientific graph-related practices. Finds that scientific journals provide more resources to facilitate graph reading and feature more elaborate descriptions and…

Describes a study of the similarities and differences in graph-related interpretations between scientists and college students engaged in collective graph interpretation. Concludes that while many students learned to provide correct answers to scientific graphing questions, they did not come to make linguistic distinctions or increase their…

Attempts to develop a methodology for assessing the relationship between students' written text and their scientific thinking by investigating how one group of middle school students generated meanings for scientific data and expressed them in writing. Finds that many student reports contained a minimal number of written inferences, expressing…

Argues that teaching for social justice is a viable science-education goal. Claims that the issues and challenges among science educators in Western and non-Western cultures are more similar than different, and that it is incumbent upon all cultures to contribute in meaningful ways to the development and environmental sustainability of our global…

Discusses some of the issues that face science educators working in developing nations. Explains that educators in the developing world should recognize existing First-World hegemony and develop their own systems, programs, and practices that are authentic and contextually relevant rather than follow the dominant order in an uncritical way. (WRM)

Synthesizes the concept of "cultural border crossing" with "collateral learning," its cognitive explanation. Examines and advocates the efficacy of reanalyzing previously published interpretive data in light of this conceptual synthesis. Contains 59 references. (Author/WRM)

Interview and case-study techniques were used in an ethnographic-interpretive study of non-Western students. Findings indicate that in developing countries, enculturation into a Western school view involves an implicit devaluation of students' traditional world views which govern their village lifestyles. Concludes that a Western school view is of…

Key aspects of student difficulty with proportional reasoning can be understood only when the social and cultural contexts in which it is embedded are considered. A constructivist, interpretive case study provided insights into physics students' associations between cultural heritage, world views, societal expectations, authoritarianism,…