Computational thinking (CT) is a way of making sense of the natural world and problem solving with computer science concepts and skills. Although CT and science integrations have been called for in the literature, empirical investigations of such integrations are lacking. Prior work in natural selection education indicates students struggle to…

Research experience is increasingly considered an important component of science education at the secondary school and undergraduate levels. This paper presents a case study of students learning in a unique apprenticeship model in which students are engaged in long-term (18 month) open-ended research projects in physics that are done at the…

Students at the junior high school (JHS) level often cannot use their knowledge of physics for explaining and predicting phenomena. We claim that this difficulty stems from the fact that explanations are multi-step reasoning tasks, and students often lack the qualitative problem-solving strategies needed to guide them. This article describes a new…

Investigated use of analog tasks for determining difficulties that high school chemistry students (N=619) might encounter in solving molarity problems. One finding is that analog task used is a predictor of success on a molarity test. (Author/JN)

Examples of scoring protocols, reliability data, and the relationship between components of a laboratory examination are reported. Differences between BSCS and non-BSCS biology students are examined. (AL)

Explores the relationship of an individual's reliance or nonreliance upon concrete cues in problem solving and performance on a model-based measure of hierarchical classification. Level of cognitive development, as determined by performance on Piaget-type tasks, generally predicted hierarchical classification ability of junior- and senior-high…

There was no significant difference in attitudes toward biology between high-ability grade nine biology students exposed to 20 randomly selected Invitations to Enquiry'' and similar students whose course did not include invitations. There is some suggestion that more difficult Invitations'' later in the course may have arrested a general decline…

Studied was the performance of four Piagetian tests for formal reasoning by students between the ages of 9 and 15. Concluded that boys performed better than girls. (MLH)

Determined whether chemistry students (N=332) understood analog tasks that could be used for teaching the mole concept. Also identified possible difficulties that students might have in solving mole problems. Seven major conclusions are reported and discussed, including the finding that two-step problems were more difficult to solve than one-step…

Investigates the effects of two context variables on the performance of seventh-grade students on a qualitative and numerical proportional reasoning test. Explores the nature of the relationships between rational number skills, qualitative reasoning about ratios, and numerical proportional reasoning. (Author/YP)

Discusses a study which focused on students' actual programming behavior. Descriptive data revealed that the high school students spent little time in planning their programs or writing their code. Their debugging behavior was characterized as a trial and error strategy. (ML)

Reported the development and validation of an integrated model of performance on chemical concept-volumetric analysis. Model was tested on 265 chemistry students in eight schools.Results indicated that for subjects using algorithms without understanding, performance on volumetric analysis problems was not influenced by proportional reasoning…

Describes the problem-solving behaviors of experts and novices engaged in solving seven chemical equilibrium problems. Lists 27 behavioral tendencies of successful and unsuccessful problem solvers. Discusses several implications for a problem solving theory, think-aloud techniques, adequacy of the chemistry domain, and chemistry instruction.…

Examines the effect of three different modes of task orientation on observational attainment in practical chemistry. Results include the overall performance on the chemistry observation test and an analysis of the influence of the complexity of observational tasks on observational attainment. (Author/GS)

Reviews an investigation of the effects of problem format and the number of independent variables on the responses of students to a control of variables reasoning task. Results indicate that adding independent variables to a control of variables reasoning problem leads to an overload of working memory which affects performance. (ML)