Describes an attempt to teach electronics to disadvantaged high school students in Israel through an instructional method based on guided individual learning combined with laboratory experiments. Discusses the successes of the program in terms of academic achievement, self-learning competencies, laboratory skills, and attitudes. (ML)

Describes students' initial thinking strategies and investigates the influence of learning environments on progress, transfer, and retention of students' thinking strategies. Results indicate that students do not use scientific reasoning when first encountering the problem, but interaction with the learning environment increases the rate of…