Deciphering teachers' paths to their disciplinary professional identities can make important elements of their tacit knowledge explicit and available to their students.

Interprets student-teachers' responses to open-ended interview probes concerning the relationship of humans to the nonhuman natural world. Supports the argument for incorporating students' ecophilosophies into instruction in environmental education. Contains 24 references. (DDR)

Analyzes the evolution of the French physics curricula and experiments from the beginning of the century to the present. Shows the strong coherence of the aspects of energy presented through teaching content and experiments. (DDR)

Measures both teaching efficacy and the holding of specific alternative conceptions of preservice elementary teachers (N=619). Uses a survey to determine the relationship between teaching efficacy and certain alternative conceptions. Contains 77 references. (DDR)

Examines the essential characteristics of engineering teachers' pedagogical content knowledge by studying teachers' conceptions of their students' ideas of moment. Finds that although teachers originally appeared to be familiar with their students' conceptions, they were rather astonished by the general pattern of student thinking. (Author/SOE)

Reports on an effort to improve articulation between science and education at Temple University. Describes the implementation of the cooperative controversy strategy into elementary science methods courses. Contains 26 references. (DDR)

Fourth-year university students (n=12) in a secondary-science-education degree program in Singapore were interviewed after demonstrations of five familiar chemical reactions. The majority of interviewees used perceptually-dominated rather than conceptually-dominated thinking and were unable to use scientific concepts consistently across the five…

This paper reports an analysis of qualitatively different ways in which teachers experience change in their understanding of subject matter they have recently taught. In this exploratory study, interviews with 31 'typical' teachers from a range of first and second-year university subjects revealed that 20 reported no experience of change in their…

Discusses the results of a four-year study of the conceptions of energy held by science teachers in training. Concludes that the group held a number of different alternative conceptual frameworks. Contains 20 references. (DDR)

Primary teacher preparation courses to need support students in developing not only science content knowledge, but also pedagogical knowledge appropriate to the effective translation and representation of subject matter for learners in classrooms. In the case of the generalist primary trainee, this constitutes a considerable challenge. This study…

Explores high school students' and preservice teachers' knowledge of light, vision, and related topics before and after commonly practiced instruction. Suggests a hierarchical structure to represent the collective conceptual knowledge of students and teachers in terms of facets and schemes of knowledge. Makes suggestions for designing instruction…

This study is an attempt to document the connection between the way children construct mathematics in the second grade and the way student teachers construct their knowledge base. The study examines how student teachers integrate their formal and informal knowledge of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy with the reality of the second grade…

This study revealed some of the factors that influence preservice elementary teachers' instructional planning in word problem solving by examining preservice teachers' conceptions of how to teach word problem solving. Twenty-one interviews of preservice teachers were conducted before and after the mathematics methods course and the protocols were…

This paper details one young woman's journey in a 16-week mathematics content course for pre-service teachers. It analyzes her initial efforts at problem solving in groups, and her ability to see and recall explicitly connections that were inherent in the instructor's conceptions of the problems. Using her writing during the course, the paper…

This proceedings covers the domain and content areas of learning and learners; curriculum and materials; instruction (including computer-assisted instruction); assessment and evaluation; history and philosophy of science; teacher preparation and professional development; and related areas of interest including environmental, special, health,…