Literacy is a powerful tool to engage students in learning about the social, cultural, political, and natural worlds around them. This is especially true within the discipline of science where students use reading and writing to engage in scientific inquiry. In the era of accountability reform, however, students spend more time acquiring reading…

Science is a way of knowing about the world. At once a process, a product, and an institution, science enables people to both engage in the construction of new knowledge as well as use information to achieve desired ends. Access to science--whether using knowledge or creating it--necessitates some level of familiarity with the enterprise and…

For the majority of adults, the media constitute their main source of information about science and science-related matters impacting on society. To help prepare young people to engage with science in the media, teachers are being exhorted to equip their students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to respond critically to science-related…

Engaging students in authentic scientific research has become an important component of undergraduate science education at many institutions. The purpose of this paper is to explore authentic research experiences as contexts for learning. The authors review empirical studies of undergraduate research experiences in order to critically evaluate the…

Challenging behavior exhibited by young children is becoming recognized as a serious impediment to social-emotional development and a harbinger of severe maladjustment in school and adult life. Consequently, professionals and advocates from many disciplines have been seeking to define, elaborate, and improve on existing knowledge related to the…

Explains that near-death research is moving in three directions: (1) the ongoing accumulation of knowledge on the near-death experience through scientifically derived studies; (2) the examination of post-mortem survival; and (3) the clinical application of the findings of near- death research. (Author/RC)

A case is made that the term "science" in reference to special education is misused, and that the methods of empiricist science are inappropriately applied to the study of special education. Article concludes that many of the criticisms leveled at special education can be traced back to this misunderstanding of science. (Author/CR)

The main differences between pragmatism and scientific realism seem to focus on the certainty of knowledge. Pragmatists contend that one can never be entirely certain of one's beliefs, whereas scientific realists argue that progress has been, and can be, made in explaining things about the world. (SLD)

Profiles a few of the affinities between pragmatists and scientific realists, and indicates a few dramatic differences dividing these schools of thought. Pragmatic research is driven by anticipated consequences. Scientific realists hope to find the truth about what the world is really like. (SLD)