The present study explores ways to enhance students' question-asking ability (i.e., the ability to ask critical questions), which is the premise of scientific inquiry and a precondition for effective science teaching. A survey of junior high school students in Zhejiang province in China showed that students' questioning behavior was not well…

Race has been a longstanding topic in the biology textbook curriculum. Yet, there appears to be no research investigating whether the treatment of race in modern biology textbooks impacts how students conceptualize race. In the present study, a double-blind field experiment employing mixed-methods is used to investigate the impact of…

This study examines the process by which system thinking perceptions develop within the context of a water cycle curriculum. Four junior high school students undergoing an especially designed inquiry-based intervention were closely observed before, during, immediately after, and 6 years after completing a year long systems-based learning program.…

In this study we investigated junior high school students' processes of argumentation and cognitive development in science and socioscientific lessons. Detailed studies of the relationship between argumentation and the development of scientific knowledge are rare. Using video and audio documents of small group and classroom discussions, the…

This longitudinal study investigated the progression in junior high school (JHS) students' conceptions of the structure of matter while studying a new instructional approach dealing with "Materials." In particular, we studied the progression of students' learning along two dimensions: (a) the conceptual model; and (b) the context of application.…

Examination of data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) to find effects of family commitment in education on student achievement in seventh-grade science found that around 22% of the variance in student science achievement could be explained by the selected significant LSAY variables. (Author/MKR)

This study investigates how 25 junior high school students employed their bodies of knowledge and responded to problem cues while individually performing a science experiment and reasoning about a drops phenomenon. Line-by-line content analysis conducted on students' written ad hoc explanations aimed to reveal students' concepts and their…

Reports a study to determine whether the level of logical thinking, as indicated by performance on a task requiring control of variables, of a group of low SES urban students could be increased through a series of instructional exercises carried out under ordinary classroom conditions. (Author/CP)

Studies of a group of seventh-grade students who were tested for inquiry skills using the TAB Science Test showed no significant differences between those students who had studied the Intermediate Science Curriculum Study (ISCS) and those who studied another curriculum. (MLH)

Examines the feasibility of intensive instruction (II) in either the observation of details or hypothesis generation, utilizing a discrepant event filmloop, as a model for improving the open exploration skills of ninth graders. (Author/GA)

Describes research studies stimulated by the concern for facilitation of logical operations in elementary school and junior high school children and based on the assumption that the level of reasoning used for inquiry and concept acquisition by every individual is substantially below his capacity. (PEB)

Reports on twelve year-old students instructed in Nuffield Project and in "traditional" classrooms. A division of the subjects into two groups based on intelligence revealed significant differences on classification ability. Interaction effects were also observed. (CP)

Examined junior high school students' (N=2175) perceptions of actual and preferred classroom environment and teachers' (N=56) perceptions of the actual environment. Results indicated that students preferred a more favorable environment that was perceived as being actually present, and that teachers perceived their classroom environment more…

Classifies 12-year-old schoolchildren as either convergers (those who excel on conventional tests but do poorly on open-ended tests), divergers (those who excel on open-ended tests but do poorly on intelligence tests), or all-rounders (those who are equally good or bad on all tests) and searches for correlates with academic achievement, and…

Explored were the effects of direct or indirect reinforcement and student knowledge of the criteria for acceptable hypotheses on hypothesis generation by ninth-grade students. A combination of both of the variables, reinforcement and knowledge of acceptable hypotheses, appear to lead to better hypothesis generation. (CS)