In today's heavily science-dependent global society, science education should be the key to learners more fully grasping global issues. A content analysis of 24 elementary school science textbooks in Taiwan was undertaken to examine how global issues were represented. The results revealed that about half of the content was related to global…

This paper describes the progress of applying the integrated curriculum in two elementary classrooms. Utilizing science as the core course of integrated curriculum, three elementary teachers and two university-based educators worked together to design and to conduct the experimental course of integrated-curriculum. Based on the approach of…

This study explored and documented Taiwanese students' alternative conceptions of animal classification. We examined the understanding of the "animal", "vertebrate" and "invertebrate", "fish", "amphibian", "reptile", "bird", and "mammal" concepts among elementary,…

In 1972, the Ministry of Education in the Republic of China gave the Taiwan Provincial Institute for Elementary School Teachers Inservice Education primary responsibility for research and development (R&D) for all elementary school curricula. The project in science and mathematics was carried out in two phases. Phase I, R&D, has five…

The development of an instructional model based on a learning cycle including correlation, analysis, and generalization (CAG) is described. A module developed for heat and temperature was administered to test its effects by comparing its use with the same unit in the New Physical Science Curriculum (NPSC). The methodology, results, and discussion…

This paper reports on the latest outcomes of an ongoing cross national research project that examines the relationship between teachers' beliefs about the nature of science and the classroom learning environment from a reform-oriented constructivist perspective in junior high school science classrooms in Australia and Taiwan. The focus is on an…