College biology students attending an audio-tutorial center with high kinetic structure performed significantly better on achievement tests than students in a corresponding low kinetic structure laboratory. Gives numerous other findings concerning measurable aspects of audio-tutorial settings. (MLH)

Describes a validation study in which tenth-grade students received instruction on electric circuits using a learning hierarchy of concepts constructed from a task analysis procedure. (MLH)

Describes a study in which tenth-grade biology students who were low verbal performers scored significantly higher on achievement tests when provided with picture-word diagrams of biological concepts than when provided with block-word diagrams. Students and teachers also preferred picture-word diagrams as indicated by a questionnaire. (MLH)

Describes two experiments with science method students that showed that writing an essay favorable to a particular topic resulted in an attitude change toward that topic. (MLH)

Describes a validity and reliability study in which elementary and secondary school science teachers were administered the Moore Assessment Profile, designed to identify science teacher needs. (MLH)

Describes the procedures used to evaluate the effectiveness of the teacher education curriculum, Physics for Elementary Teachers, including the measurement of students' understanding of physics, understanding of science, and attitudes toward science. (MLH)

Discusses activities that occurred during an elementary science methods course, and the fact that the students' success in these activities was not correlated with measures of success in a classroom teaching exercise as determined by assisting teachers. (MLH)

Comments on a journal article that suggests that educational statistics may be compared even in cases where different experimental units are used in the analyses. (MLH)

Comments that a previously published educational research article did not include sufficient background information about previous research. (MLH)

Reviews Piaget's theory of cognitive development and discusses how science concepts can be taught to secondary school students at different cognitive levels. (MLH)

Forty-five children, ages nine through eleven, were divided into control group and experimental groups that read or wrote hunches concerning a discrepant event involving sliding blocks. Those who generated hunches were shown to learn more in subsequent inquiry behaviors designed to explain the discrepant event. (MLH)

Fifteen Australian ninth-grade science classes used Australian Science Education Project (ASEP) curriculum materials with one of three levels of teacher structuring. Videotaped classes were analyzed for student and teacher behaviors. Concludes that more structuring results in more cognitive activity, more experimentation, and less task-irrelevant…

Two British elementary classes were taught chemistry by either Scheme A, involving the idea of chemical reactions as combination or decomposition, or Scheme B, the Nuffield inductive method utilizing heat and weight changes. Test results showed that Class A performed significantly better. (MLH)

Students from 84 biology, 113 chemistry, and 41 physics classes drawn from midwestern states completed the Learning Environment Inventory and the Science Attitude Inventory. One out of ten LEI scales predicted attitude scores of biology and chemistry students, and none was found for physics students. (MLH)

Preservice physics teachers in a British university completed a word association test by supplying five physical quantities which they associated with a number of electromagnetic stimulus concepts. Gives analysis of concept linking as it may occur in the students' cognitive structures. (MLH)