The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Interactive Lecture Demonstrations over traditional instruction on university students' understanding of heat and temperature. The participants were 327 first year undergraduate students from two science classes in two academic years from the same university in Thailand. One class…

In this paper we report a large-scale study designed to evaluate the impact of masters courses on the professional development of science school teachers and, consequently, on the improvement of the quality of science education. The underlying assumption of this study is that masters teachers are widely recognized as assuming a relevant role to…

Both substantive (i.e. factual knowledge, concepts, laws and theories) and procedural knowledge (understanding and applying concepts such as reliability and validity, measurement and calibration, data collection, measurement error, the ability to interpret evidence and the like) are involved in carrying out an open-ended science investigation.…

This paper will report on the development of a research program by a group of science educators at Kristianstad University, which has its roots in a longitudinal study I conducted concerning students' developing understandings of ecological processes. Following the insights generated in this first study concerning the nature of student…

Since the early 1980s we have been engaged in the design, implementation, and evaluation of "cognitive acceleration" programs, which claim to enhance students' general intellectual processing skills. We have published extensive data showing long-term effects of these programs on students? cognitive development and academic achievement. In this…

This paper describes the methods and outcomes of a 12-year longitudinal study into the effects of an early intervention program, while reflecting back on changes that have occurred in approaches to research, learning and instruction since the preliminary inception stages of the study in the mid 1960s. We began the study to challenge the prevailing…

This paper is a reflection on a three-year longitudinal study that explored the development of children's concept of a substance, for which detailed results concerning children's understandings have been reported elsewhere. The attention in this paper is on the methodological features related to the longitudinal nature of the study and the…

The growth in science understanding and reasoning of 12 children is being traced through their primary school years. The paper reports findings concerning children's growing understandings of evaporation, and their changing responses to exploration activities, that show the complexity and coherence of learning pathways. Children's responses to…

In this paper I describe and discuss the way that a book I had written on a five-year longitudinal study of school science teaching was received by the pupils and teachers it featured. By and large the pupils' reception was positive. However, one group of teachers was deeply hurt by the book. I trace this mainly to my failure to consider…

Aiming to encourage longitudinal studies in science education, we clarify conceptual and methodological aspects of longitudinal research. We use the studies that other articles in this issue describe to illustrate these aspects. The illustrations range from attempts to promote long-term change through experimental teaching to investigations that…

How do we see young children's thinking in science? Is it, as much previous research has led us to believe, that their ideas can be neatly boxed like "brown paper packages tied up with strings"--as the song from "The Sound of Music" goes? Or are their ideas like "wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings" ("Sound of Music"): fluid, complex,…

This study aims at presenting a grid for analysing the way the language employed in Greek school science textbooks tends to project pedagogic messages. These messages are analysed for the different school science subjects (i.e., Physics, Chemistry, Biology) and educational levels (i.e., primary and lower secondary level). The analysis is made…

In this paper, we present a case study of a beginning chemistry teacher who enrolled in a project aimed to contribute to the development of teachers' knowledge of models and modelling in science. The project consisted of a series of institutional meetings in combination with an action research project the teacher conducted in her own classes. By…

The purpose of this article is to describe the development, validation and use of the "Constructivist Multimedia Learning Environment Survey" (CMLES). This questionnaire assesses teachers' and students' perceptions of the learning environment when students use online multimedia programs while teachers use constructivism as a referent for…

The purpose of this study was to describe how three primary teachers attempted to overcome incomplete content knowledge when teaching an astronomy unit. Daily observations of science activities were videotaped and transcribed from each classroom to determine the influences on the changes in teacher and student ideas of astronomy. Teachers' ideas…