The primary purpose of this study was to determine if self-instructional data analysis sessions could be used effectively as traditional college laboratories to reinforce students' understanding of certain principles of mechanics. The secondary purpose was to determine whether any of the 140 college physics students involved had a dependence on…

In an effort to help directors and actors select and describe effective stage movement, this study developed an approach to human movement, based on selected facts and principles from several related disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, and mechanical physics. The theories of expressive movement discussed and the method recommended for the…

The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent the breakdown of Newtonian classical physics and the new concepts of modern physics have changed the treatment of elementary physics in undergraduate college textbooks and to evaluate implications of the change. Forty-three textbooks published between 1910 and 1966 were examined and placed…

Students enrolled in the introductory physics laboratory at New Mexico State University participated in this study. A stated set of objectives, developed by Dr. John M. Fowler of the Commission on College Physics, was used in the laboratory. This study attempted to measure student achievement based on the use of these objectives as opposed to the…

Investigated was the assumption that college students are fully capable, by the time they enter college, of operating at the level of formal thought. The subjects selected for this study were students in chemistry and physics courses at a state university and an inner-city community college. Each student was tested with a Piegetian task to…

The purposes of this study were: (1) to evaluate the effectiveness of audio-tutorial (A-T) instruction and (2) to identify, classify and study differences in problem solving approach using a theoretical framework derived from the ideas of D. P. Ausubel. Seventy of 420 students taking a college introductory non-calculus physics course used A-T…

It was the purpose of this study to determine the status of physics teaching in Montana secondary public schools in 1972-73. The results of the investigation were compared to earlier studies to determine the progress that had been made in physics since 1959. The study concentrated on teaching objectives and such external factors as enrollment in…

This study, conducted at Northeast Catholic High School for Boys in Philadelphia, was designed to determine if a significant difference existed between ninth-grade students experienced in Introductory Physical Science and ninth-grade students experienced in conventional General Science in ability to manipulate basic physics laboratory equipment,…

This study applied thematic approaches to the study of introductory physics. Symmetry principles and conservation laws were chosen to serve as themes for the development of a unit on elementary particles used by students who were enrolled in a physics sequence for nonscience majors. The unit was independently evaluated by teachers of general…

Two teaching methods (learner-centered vs. conventional) were investigated as related to achievement and content covered in a basic electricity course in which 65 students were enrolled. All students participating in the study were given the Bell Laboratories Electricity Examination as a pretest and as a final test. The Otis Test of Mental Ability…

This study investigated the extent to which certain aspects of the structure of a learner's memory following instruction corresponded with the structure of the instructional material. Content structure was represented using digraph theory. The digraph analysis revealed a formal structure built substantially on six specific concepts. Cognitive…

The purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to test the hypothesis that a Similarity Rating Model based on a Classification Scheme of relationships between six words in physics is representative of human subjects' judgments of similarity between the six words, and (2) to test the hypothesis that the Classification Scheme could be used in a Word…

This research attempted to identify some of the possible factors related to the downward trend in secondary school physics enrollment in the United States. A pilot study was conducted in one high school to develop a "Science Attitude Inventory" that was then administered to 3,738 college preparatory students in 11 secondary schools in the…

The problem of this investigation was to compare the effectiveness of the lecture-discussion method of instruction and the multimedia programmed method in promoting achievement in a noncredit, college level physics course. The three instructors taught 180 freshmen who had failed to achieve a minimum grade of 70 percent on a physics placement…

This study was proposed to determine the occurrence, stability, and character of kinetic structure patterns within college physics lessons. Six lectures were randomly chosen from the schedules of each of six cooperating physics professors and a transcription of audio-tape recordings of each lecture was prepared. The flow of discourse was broken…