The purpose of this study was to analyze the effectiveness of scripted biology curriculum as a means of providing students with the information required to increase content knowledge, while comparing curriculum developed by the teacher that utilizesthe Understanding by Design (UbD) framework (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). The study used a mixed…

School-based citizen-science can be a powerful means to engage youth in environmental education, yet developing robust science curricula around citizen-science activities is tremendously challenging. Prior research provides limited examples and very little guidance for curriculum designers. To support the designers of school-based citizen-science…

Scientific problems of the twenty-first century involve complex research questions that require an interdisciplinary approach. Educational research suggests that overall student achievement is greater in an interdisciplinary science curriculum than in a discipline-specific science curriculum. Regardless, the secondary school science curriculum in…

Alignment to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is essential in efforts to interpret the standards and to compare curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment efforts with respect to the standards. However, relatively little work has explored the alignment implications of NGSS. This article is a conceptual analysis that gives an overview of…

Saudi Arabia's Vision for 2030 in development is exceedingly concerned with curriculum development. It believes that the current curriculum does no longer support the students' preparation for both life and work. Therefore, the present study aimed to reach a consensus by a set of educational experts on the importance of providing the science…

The authors of this article, all of whom have been a part of this effort to assess argumentation in literacy-rich science curriculum, have struggled with our attempts to build 3 argument-related assessments--understanding, critiquing, and constructing arguments about scientific phenomena in both oral and written modes. Loosely affiliated with the…

There is on-going international interest in the relationships between assessment instruments, students' understanding of science concepts and context-based curriculum approaches. This study extends earlier research showing that students can develop connections between contexts and concepts--called "fluid transitions"--when studying…

The heart of learning chemistry is the ability to connect a compound's structure to its function; Lewis structures provide an essential link in this process. In many cases, their construction is taught using an algorithmic approach, containing a set of step-by-step rules. We believe that this approach is in direct conflict with the precepts of…

A comparative study was conducted to compare two approaches to engineering design curriculum between different schools (inter-school) and between two curricular approaches, "Project Lead the Way" (PLTW) and "Engineering Projects in Community Service" (EPIC High) (inter-curricular). The researchers collected curriculum…

Discovery teaching advocates minimal teacher guidance. Materials from two curriculum development projects were evaluated with respect to this guidance. Results indicate a considerable discrepancy between curriculum intention and reality, as measured by the degree of teacher guidance afforded in the projects' instructional materials. (CP)

This paper features a summary of comments and suggestions from participants in the Alberta Science Education Leaders' Symposia on the future of secondary science education. Topics discussed include needs, challenges, and concerns in science education; suggestions for change; renewing secondary science programs; professional development of…

This Italian contribution to the STTIS (science teacher training in an information society) investigations of transformations of curriculum innovations looks at the implementation of the use of real-time experiments and images (RTEI), in which computer data acquisition and display is built in to aspects of science teaching. Certain critical…

The Instructional Strategy Diagnostic Profile (ISDP) was designed to enable instructional developers and evaluators to predict the effectiveness of, and prescribe improvements for existing instructional materials. Experimental studies were conducted in introductory college statistics and physics classes to validate the ISDP and its accompanying…

This manual is intended as a resource for teachers who have special education students in their mainstream science classes, for curriculum adoption committees, and for publishers and consumers of science curriculum materials. Part 1 describes general characteristics of students with disabilities and provides general mainstreaming strategies and…

Reported is a profile of nonmajor instruction determined through a nationwide survey of college and university professors who teach introductory courses to non-science majors. The purpose of the survey was to identify the critical issues and problems that exist related to this population of students. (KR)