Describes procedures, results, and conclusions of a study designed to evaluate the success achieved in an experimental secondary school course aimed at fostering scientific literacy. The pretest-posttest control group design with matching was used. Results indicated that pretreatment-posttreatment growth score differences between the comparison…

The Personal Beliefs Inventory was used to identify teachers who had strong feelings toward or against the use of experimentation in science classes. Students in the classes of the 16 teachers with the most extreme scores on the Inventory were administered two tests: one class of each teacher was given the Test on Understanding Science and another…

Compared was the effectiveness of a two-year integrated chemistry-physics course with a two-year sequence of separate courses, in developing understanding of chemistry and physics concepts, understanding science and its methods, and reactions to the study of science. Both groups used the content, materials and instructional approach of the…

The purpose of this study was to describe and exemplify a model to aid schools in introducing and evaluating new instructional programs. Four basic steps are identified: selecting the curriculum goals, identifying a possible program or programs, evaluating the implementation of the program or programs, and developing and obtaining instruments for…

Students who solved problems individually or in small informal groups understand science and scientists better than those who solved the same problems (based on BSCS Blue Version) as a class group. (AA)

This study measured the effects of teacher-directed and self-directed problem solving techniques on junior high school students' expressed attitudes about science and scientists, their achievement of understandings of science facts and principles, and the rate at which they mastered understandings of the conceptualizations of science necessary to…

THIS INVESTIGATION WAS DESIGNED TO COMPARE CHANGE IN CRITICAL THINKING IN GROUPS OF STUDENTS STUDYING HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY IN LABORATORY-CENTERED CLASSES AND IN LECTURE-DEMONSTRATION-CENTERED CLASSES. TWENTY BIOLOGY CLASSES WERE RANDOMLY SELECTED FROM THE FOUR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE SALT LAKE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT. TEN CLASSES WERE RANDOMLY…

This study was designed to evaluate the success of an experimental secondary school course for fostering scientific literacy and the development of scientific attitudes. Students were matched using I.Q., sex, grade level, involvement with formal science courses, and cumulative grade point average. Twenty-one "self selected" eleventh and…

Determined were differences in understanding the nature of science and scientists and in subject matter achievement between seventh grade students who studied source papers as part of their instruction in science and those who did not. Experimental students analyzed ten source papers related in subject matter content to the local course of study.…

The effects of the type of earth science course (Earth Science Curriculum Project (ESCP) and non-ESCP), the directness or indirectness of teacher-pupil interaction in various teaching activities (I/D ratio), and the teacher's philosophical orientation (T/NT ratio) on various student outcomes such as understanding of science and scientists;…

Students whose Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) physics course was supplemented with the PSSC films did not achieve significantly higher scores on the PSSC Achievement Test or the Test on Understanding Science than students who did not see the films, when intelligence and science background were used as covariates. (AL)

Reported is a study having several major purposes. Among these were (1) to investigate the change in "understanding the nature of science" as shown by high school students studying physics-astronomy at a summer science institute and (2) to compare the level of understanding possessed by the summer science group with normative secondary…