With the advent of the standards movement, most states have produced statewide tests that evaluate children's understanding of expository science text. Expository texts are designed to explain, describe, or present a logical argument. Usually, the purpose of expository texts is to present new information. This article describes a research-based…

Significant mental health problems can and do occur in young children. In some cases, these problems can have serious consequences for early learning, social competence, and lifelong health. Furthermore, the foundations of many mental health problems that endure through adulthood are established early in life through the interaction of genetic…

A review of research on fathering and research on men employed in work with young children in centers and in elementary schools emphasises the importance of positive male engagement with young children for their optimal development. Research also reveals the complexity of studying these relationships and the barriers in families and in society…

This document contains the final program and abstracts for the 1997 annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST). Strands of the meeting included "Learning: Students' Conceptions and Conceptual Change"; "Learning: Classroom Contexts and Learner Characteristics"; "Teaching";…

The purpose of this descriptive study was to create and test questions on stoichiometry with number ratios for quick mental calculations and to identify students' problem-solving strategies. The present study was a component of a more comprehensive investigation in which 7,441 German senior high school students were asked to work on 154 test items…

Students who study algebra are more likely to attend college than those who don't. A major hurdle for students in studying algebra is the transition from arithmetic to algebra. In response to overcoming this hurdle, the College Board and Educational Testing Service has developed "Algebridge," a teaching supplement that integrates…

An ethnographic study was conducted with the goal of comparing the botanical knowledge of nine sixth grade students with the botanical concepts developed in the elementary textbook series, Science, by Silver Burdett, 1985. The extent to which the child's conceptual framework resembles that of the scientist and the extent to which the textbook…

The main purposes of this study were to determine: (1) how high school students represent the physical phenomena of phase changes; (2) how they modify their representation of these physical phenomena to accommodate new observation; (3) what factors lead to student difficulty in modifying representations; and (4) how the…

The objective of this study was to assess the misconceptions held by preservice teachers about essential concepts of the moon related to information taught in elementary schools in Taiwan and to develop multiple-choice test items to identify the misconceptions about the moon. Additionally, this study considered relationships of gender, religion,…

Designed to focus on teaching for higher-level cognitive learning, this study measured student perceptions of psychosocial aspects of their classroom learning and involved a team of six researchers. The study consisted of an intensive 10-week investigation of two above-average science teachers in a suburban high school in Perth, Western Australia.…

This document is the second of three volumes of the proceedings an international seminar which focused on student misconceptions in science and mathematics as well as teaching strategies intended to deal with those misconceptions. An introduction to the volume explains the format of the conference and the organization of the sessions. It stresses…

Students of reasoning have long tried to understand how people revise systems of beliefs. This paper maintains that people often change their beliefs in ways driven by considerations of explanatory coherence. In this report, a computational model is described of how experimental subjects revise their naive beliefs about physical motion. First,…

Reviews and analyzes research related to the teaching and learning of science completed in 1985. Includes: (1) reviews of research; (2) evaluation; (3) student characteristics; (4) attitudes toward science; (5) conceptual reasoning; (6) instructional treatments; (7) cognitive skills; (8) laboratory work; (9) microcomputer applications; (10)…

Discusses the relationship of school size to understanding of scientific concepts. Results indicated that students in small high schools had fewer instances of understanding and more instances of misunderstanding of the concepts of diffusion and homeostasis. No difference was observed for concepts related to food production in plants and…

Describes the use of a microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) in teaching the concepts of heat and temperature to eighth grade students. Discusses the advantages of being able to instantly display the results of their experimentation with the use of temperature and light probes, and heat pulsors. (TW)