In this study, we investigated how students organized their knowledge about organic chemistry reactions in a transformed curriculum, including their choices, abilities, and changes over time. This transformed curriculum focuses on interpreting the underlying mechanistic patterns of chemical reactions and emphasizes the principles of reactivity in…

Learning about heredity is important across the K-12 continuum. However, these ideas may be challenging for students. We examined third-grade students' ideas about heredity in the context of a new, six-week, model-based science unit that uses corn as a model organism to support students' ideas about heredity. We analyzed data collected during…

Labs have long been considered an important component of physics education. However, while there has been progress in transforming physics education in physics lecture classes to improve student learning, less progress has been made in introductory physics labs. At the same time, the physics community has come to recognize that there is a need to…

The vision for science proficiency presented in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" calls for significant shifts in both teaching and assessment. In this paper, we describe an effort to develop and validate a set of "proximal transfer tasks" for high school biology classrooms where teachers were implementing a…

Two separate writing-to-learn activities in which students wrote to authentic audiences outside of the instructor were used in a college integrated science course, Science of Water. For the first task, students were asked to write to fourth-grade students, and for the second, students were asked to write to their academic advisor. An overview of…

Knowledge structure is an important aspect for defining students' competency in biology learning, but how knowledge structure is influenced by the teaching process in naturalistic biology classroom settings has scarcely been empirically investigated. In this study, 49 biology lessons in the teaching unit "blood and circulatory system" in…

This paper argues for a renewed focus on statistical reasoning in the beginning school years, with opportunities for children to engage in data modelling. Results are reported from the first year of a 3-year longitudinal study in which three classes of first-grade children (6-year-olds) and their teachers engaged in data modelling activities. The…

This paper describes and discusses the role of practical work in science education in Ireland. The 2002 report of a government Task Force on the Physical Sciences, set up to consider the problems facing the teaching of the physical sciences in second-level schools in Ireland, has resulted in rapid reform of the science curriculum at both junior…

Community college administrators and faculty in the areas of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physics, and microbiology attended an 11-day workshop to redefine, modify, and develop science concepts for a core curriculum in the allied health field. To achieve workshop objectives, the committee heard presentations by consultants, visited clinical…

Described is an analysis of the content, tasks, and strategies needed by students to enable them to identify insects to order by sight and to family by use of a standard dichotomous taxonomic key. Tasks and strategies are broken down and arranged progressively in the approximate order in which students should progress. Included are listings of…

The Model of Teacher Training for the Individualization of Instruction, developed at the University of Pittsburgh, is predicated upon five requirements for training teachers: (1) academic education, (2) professional education, (3) competencies, (4) guidance, and (5) clinical setting. Instruction is individualized (tailored to suit the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate students' conceptions about watersheds. Specifically: (1) What are students' conceptions of a watershed? and (2) In what ways might students' conceptions vary by grade level and community setting? This study was descriptive in nature and reflected a cross-age design involving the collection of…

This report contains a description of the conceptual background and methodology for a study concerning how academic tasks are managed in senior high school classrooms. This high school study is Phase 2 of the Managing Academic Tasks (MAT) study. The MAT study is focused on understanding how curriculum experiences are shaped by the classroom…

Many have called for reform of the science curriculum to incorporate the process of inquiry: this has been shown to improve student understanding of biological concepts. Laboratory activities provide excellent opportunities to incorporate inquiry in to the curriculum. This study used a modified version of the Laboratory Task Analysis Instrument…