The Teacher Enhancement Institute (TEI) on the campus of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania involved a diverse group of teachers actively pursuing instructional improvement through workshops in thinking skills, content area, and group seminars. This test was prepared by a team of middle school science and mathematics teachers at the…

This teachers guide contains activities and materials created to teach astronomy concepts to children from grades K-8. It is organized into four units: (1) Earth and Stars; (2) Spheres and Orbits; (3) Stars and Gravity; and (4) Scales and Measurement. Activities are arranged within each unit around six content topics: (1) Earth; (2) Solar System;…

Many high school and college students experience serious difficulties in understanding as well as applying fundamental concepts in physics. The study reported in this paper focused on the difficulties in learning about vectors in physics and strategies for making the teaching of vectors more interesting and meaningful for students. Specifically,…

In the late 1980s an American newspaper reported that by one measure--the number of patents cited by successive inventors--Japan overtook the United States in the number of inventions produced during the 1970s. The reasons for this are not clear, but educational efforts promoting creative behaviors in school children are probably essential and…

This study focused on the knowledge of six outstanding science students who solved an osmosis problem meaningfully. That is, they used appropriate and substantially accurate conceptual knowledge to generate an answer. Three generated a correct answer; three, an incorrect answer. This paper identifies both the accurate and inaccurate conceptions…

Where on Earth are you? Where is your home, your school, or the bookstore on the globe we call Earth? The activities in this book are designed to show children how to orient themselves on this planet. The book is divided into three main sections. Section 1, "Finding North, No Matter What," contains the following subsections: (1) Finding…

This paper explores what it means, and what it might mean, to "achieve" in literacy. The paper points out that, although there is considerable concern over the misrepresentation of literate achievement by standardized tests, there has been substantially less demonstration of what is being left out, that is, exactly what of significance is achieved…

This use of the term "student's misconceptions" reflects a knowledge transmission view of teaching rather than a constructivist view. Among science educators there has been an undue emphasis on changing student views into views accepted by the scientific community. This overemphasis mirrors the preoccupation with transmitting the "right answer"…

In an effort to investigate the effects of a teaching strategy that helps students to identify concept conflicts through experimentation and guided investigation on students' conceptual changes and learning outcomes, 596 students (393 junior high school, 170 senior high school, and 33 college students) were administered two solution tests…

A set of much examined scientific papers which specifically portray a controversial topic and also manifest ally-peer and competitor-peer enscripted audiences are those written by James Watson and Francis Crick concerning their discovery of the structure of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA). The theoretical perspective of an ally-peer and…

This book shows how physics relates to daily life. Chapters included are: (1) "Physics of Fun" (dealing with the concepts of friction, Bernoulli's principle, lift, buoyancy, adhesion, cohesion, surface tension, gas expansion, waves, light, mirror images, and solar cells); (2) "Physics of Nature" (illustrating the concepts of inertia, static…

The treatment group of first-graders received audio-tutorial instruction in the particulate nature of matter; the control group received audio-tutorial instruction in a nonscience subject. The treatment group used a particulate model to explain the nature of smells much more effectively than the control group. (MLH)

Presents the philosophical basis and general characteristics of the Correlated Science Program and describes specific examples of curriculum and teaching techniques used. Explores problems encountered in developing and implementing the program. (Author/GS)

A reaction kinetics experiment for the chemical engineering undergraduate laboratory course was developed in which in-situ Fourier Transfer Infrared spectroscopy was used to measure reactant and product concentrations. The kinetics of the hydrolysis of acetic anhydride was determined by experiments carried out in a batch reactor. The results…