The purpose of this article is to introduce a methodology for analyzing the complex configurations emerging in students' speech and drawing activities, having consequences for how and what students learn and make meaning of in science. Accordingly, we launch a methodology to unfold the multidimensional communication as to deepen the analysis of…

Little research has been conducted on how to address the complex topic of death when teaching science to children. The present paper addresses this issue by examining how three elementary teachers discuss the death of wild animals during science read-aloud sessions. Our findings reveal the variety of ways in which nonhuman death can be…

Focusing on a group of African American third graders who attend a high-poverty urban school, I explore the structure-agency dialectic within contested spaces situated in a dialogically oriented science classroom. Contested spaces entail the moments in which the students challenge each other's and their teacher's science ideas and, in the process,…

This study reports on our steps toward achieving a conceptually coherent and empirically validated learning progression for carbon cycling in socio-ecological systems. It describes an iterative process of designing and analyzing assessment and interview data from students in upper elementary through high school. The product of our development…

Tested were six levels of a twelve-level hierarchical model for the attainment of concepts leading to the conservation of displacement volume. Presentation was by individual interview using either objects or drawings to present tasks. Results show five of six tested followed anticipated order and that method of presentation showed no significant…

This study describes strategies fifth- and sixth-grade children used to solve the problem of determining how to control a "vehicle" they "drove" by pressing particular keys on a computer. The problem involves identifying or discovering a set of cause-effect relationships. (Author/JN)

Describes the development and testing of an instrument for use at the eighth grade level to measure four science processes: observation, inference, verification, and classification. Indicates that the two forms of the instrument are average in reliability and high in factor validity. (CC)

Performance on five logical, spatial, and formal tasks was used to make inferences about the reasoning structures of 101 middle and high school students. Findings (obtained during interviews) include grade level differences in performance and sex differences in performance on one of the tasks. Implications for instruction are proposed. (Author/JN)

Investigated whether examining materials from several perspectives had greater effect on development of projective spatial abilities than examining materials from a single perspective. Results using 105 students (56 females, 49 males) favored the former approach. Also, sex was determined to have no direct effect on development of projective…

Investigated was the hypothesis that conservation tasks are unifactor by administering eight different conservation tasks to 96 seventh-grade science students and performing a principal component analysis on the data. Results indicated that conservation tasks may measure up to three different components of cognitive thought. (SL)

Studied the effects of aptitude variables on learning from programed science material preceded by three differently structured advance organizers. Concluded that the structural properties could benefit low ability fourth-grade students in developing an adequate conceptual scheme for organizing material. (CC)

Three research questions are explored relating the psychological phenomenon of premature closure to (1) age, (2) Piagetian developmental level, and (3) ability to generate hypothetico-deductive strategies. Children (N=141) in grades 1-6 were interviewed and administered light-and-button tasks to describe these relationships. (CS)

Discusses a study which explored the possible value of the history of science to understanding student misconceptions. Focused on photosynthesis and examined relationships between students' conceptual difficulties and the transformation of concepts through time. Student responses suggest that the history of science can be used to anticipate…

Debates as to the appropriateness of using the Karplus Islands Puzzle as an instrument to assess formal-operational thought. (CP)

This study examined whether a relationship existed between field-dependence-independence and scientific attitudes of sixth-grade students in SCIS. Findings indicated that such a relationship was not statistically significant. (Author/DS)