Student-scientist-teacher interactions provide students with several advantages. They provide opportunities to interact with experts and professionals in the field, give students a chance at meeting a role model that may impact students' career choices, and increase awareness of available career options combined with an understanding of how their…

This research explores the moment-by-moment understanding students exhibit in the learning of a non-physical science domain--the human circulatory system. The goal was to understand how students learn by capturing the nature of their initial mental models (naive conceptions), and by seeing how new information gets assimilated into their mental…

Several empirical and theoretical analyses related to scientific problem-solving are reviewed, including: detailed studies of individuals at different levels of expertise, and computer models simulating some aspects of human information processing during problem solving. Analysis of these studies has revealed many facets about the nature of the…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The inquiry reported focuses on problems/difficulties of learning about the concept of "force" through…

A functional paradigm was used as a means of interpreting why teachers and classrooms function as they do. An assessment of the nature and sources of the functional paradigms of high school biology teachers was the major consideration of this study. A population of 28 experienced high school biology teachers recognized for exemplary teaching…

Described is an ongoing study of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, separated in infancy and reared apart. Discussed are the procedures and results of this study with interpretations of the results. The effects of parenting, education, and other interventions are considered. (CW)

Although results of both formative and summative evaluation can be used for planning the next generation of a curriculum, a need exists for a third kind of evaluation, namely, Pre-Planning Evaluation (PPE). The purpose of PPE is to provide a database to curriculum development deliberations to assist in decision-making and to guard against neglect…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The investigation reported focuses on the concept of "electric current" held by 43 elementary school…

This book re-examines the dichotomy between the everyday and the disciplinary in mathematics and science education, and explores alternatives to this opposition from points of view grounded in the close examination of complex classroom events. It makes the case that students' everyday experience and knowledge in their entire manifold forms matter…