This study explores how physics teachers in a high school negotiate the relationships between individual and collective agencies in the context of the on-going curriculum reform in China. Drawing on Bandura's social cognitive theory, the study employs ethnographical methods including observation, interviewing, and the researcher's and teachers'…

Examines structural characteristics of university engineering students' conceptions of energy elicited through paragraph writing and their relations with categories of their conceptions specific to energy in solution processes identified through interviews. Reports that structures of students' conceptions are characterized primarily by…

Reports on the analysis of science curricula carried out across Canada within the framework of the Second International Science Study by: (1) describing the background to the study and the research methodology employed; (2) showing how data were organized; and (3) discussing meanings derived from the data analysis. (JN)

Describes an empirical method of developing learning hierarchies by comparing success on each tested behavior with all other behaviors. Advantages, compared with validation of a particular logical hierarchy, are illustrated by application of density principles to prediction of flotation. (AL)

Investigates how situational knowledge differs across individuals of different competence levels. Analyzes participants' descriptions of physics problem situations. Discusses the relationship between competence and the structure of problem situations, differences between experts and novices, and implications for teaching. (Author/KHR)

Summarizes major findings of the Harvard Project Physics research and evaluation activity, including data gathering techniques, descriptions of teacher characteristics, information about student responses and learning environments, and final evaluation year results. Indicates that the evaluation program is characterized by considerable research on…

Recent literature in science education suggests that, to transform girls' participation, learning, and identities within school science, we must think about ways to engage girls in different kinds of educational activities that promote broader meanings of science and scientist. This study was designed to examine more deeply this call for a changed…

Fourteen elementary and middle school teachers from an inservice physics course were found to share a common core of strongly held propositions that formed a coherent, but incorrect and contradictory, model of the sequential flow of electrical current. Theoretical and practical implications of these teachers' beliefs with respect to both…