Recent years have seen substantial improvements in the teaching of reading and early arithmetic based on rigorous analysis of the component learning skills involved in these areas and of the ways they are developed. Despite the importance attached to science, there has been very little comparable work that might provide a steer to primary school…

In this study, the two modes were operationally distinguished by the degree of teacher control over the conduct of pupil investigations. In the unstructured mode the teacher identified the area of investigation and supplied appropriate apparatus. The structured mode was identifiable with the teaching strategy typical of a curriculum such as…

Based on the work of Bruner, Piaget and others that indicates that the child's attention to misleading visual clues is an important factor in his lack of ability to conserve, this study is an attempt to demonstrate the effects of instruction in drawing two-dimensional figures on the ability of children (22 kindergarten children from middle class…

Examines strategies used by first grade children in performing a seriation task, using materials varying in length or weight. Most first-grade children employed a concept-task-strategy in serially ordering objects by length and weight. In addition Piaget's observation that length can be serially ordered before weight was upheld. (CP)

Describes a study designed to determine the effects of Science: A Process Approach (SAPA) on kindergarten children's ability to conserve on six tasks. It was concluded that the rate of attainment of conservation skills is affected at least in part by the experiences made possible by SAPA. (JR)

Presents the use of Piaget-type tasks in interviewing 108 students (grades 6, 7, and 8), to test the validity of a proposed model through which a child must pass in order to understand a specific scientific concept. The subjects' answers were scored based on the substages of development in each of five tasks involving the concept of speed.…

Reported is a method of investigating thought processes of an 11-year-old girl concerning physical phenomena such as those underlying the operations of scientific apparatus--platform balance, the spring balance, the magnet, and the pendulum. It was discovered during a period of interviews that the subject's thought processes developed in such a…

Reports the results of a study of the relationship between cognitive style and achievement in a modern elementary science program. (JR)

The objectives of this study centered on ability of first-grade students in seriate learning, the strategies used, the effects of the seriation variable on task performance, and the effects of the number of objects used. Students from four randomly selected schools were asked to order a set of 4, 6, 8, or 10 objects on length or weight. The…

Reported is a study to relate pupils' experience background and the effects of an advance organizer to his ability to understand scientific concepts. The study is based on Ausubel's subsumption theory, which states that the understanding of new learning material can be facilitated if the student has some background information which subsumes the…

The main purpose of this study was to determine the relative effectiveness of the planetarium in attaining the perceived goals of planetarium educators. The goal areas for the 986 second-grade children involved in the study were low level Cognitive or Knowledge, Comprehension, and Application; Affective or Receiving, Responding, and Valuing; and…

Reported is a study to determine the effectiveness of televised instruction to aid in changing attitude toward problem solving. A total of 153 students, in grades 5 and 6, participated in the experimental and control groups in typical rural and urban schools. A 14-program series, The Televised Learning Package or Challenge, was used with the…

Reported is a study of the effects of using the counterintuitive event in science teaching on subject-matter achievement and subject-matter retention of upper-elementary school students. Two separate units of instruction based on the demonstration-discussion method were designed for the study. A unit of instruction was designed for the control…

Reported is a study to determine differences between selected elementary Index, Revised Inquiry Index, percentage of class time spent in pupil experiment Index, Revised Inquiry Index, percentage of class time spend in pupil experiment and time spent in reading and/or extended viewing activities. Audio-tape recordings were made using materials from…

Reported is a study of the relationship between ability to perform selected Piagetian tasks and achievement in various content areas. Sixty fifth-grade students were administered the Science Research Associates Achievement Series to assess grade-level category. Also, each child was administered one or more Piagetian tasks selected to determine…