This book is designed for high school teachers and contains tools to guide teaching, professional development, assessment, program and curriculum, and interactions with the education system working towards the vision of the National Science Education Standards. The first three and last two chapters discuss the Standards that apply to all K-12…

This unit of study for high-ability language arts students in grades 2-3 uses an inquiry-based approach to investigate literature in an interdisciplinary curriculum. The guiding theme of the unit is the recognition of change as a concept that affects people and their relationships as well as the world around them. The unit provides the vehicle for…

This report describes the development and field test of "Make It Happen!," a school-based approach to integrating technology into the middle school curriculum. This activity, conducted between October 1989 and May 1991, constituted Phase II of a 5-year study of technology integration for mildly handicapped students in four middle schools…

This document reports on a doctoral-level practicum designed to train volunteers as docents to assist in the programs of the NOVA Children's Museum located on the Cedargrove School campus (Covina, California). Docents were found to be essential for more in-depth science learning to take place during hands-on museum experiences which promote the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the field experience component of an undergraduate science methods course for preservice elementary school teachers was effective in: (1) shifting student concerns about science teaching from concerns about themselves to concerns about the impact of inquiry-oriented science programs on pupils;…

The purpose of this investigation was to compare two different methodological techniques of a biology preparatory course in order to determine which curriculum's methodologies were most effective in preparing biology students for follow-up biology courses as measured by course grades. One was based upon laboratory hands-on experiences and the…

In assessing the quality of science teaching for an effort such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it is important to understand what is meant by scientific thinking--the search for explanations. Instruction should involve higher-order cognitive skill development, but it is difficult to measure reasoning and understanding…

Described are the initial prototypes of several intelligent tutoring systems designed to build students' scientific inquiry skills. These inquiry skills are taught in the context of acquiring knowledge of principles from a microworld that models a specific domain. This paper discusses microworlds that have been implemented for microeconomics,…

During 1974, materials developed by the Australian Science Education Projects (ASEP) became available in final published form. The publication of these materials was an especially important undertaking since ASEP was the first national curriculum project, in any subject area, to be developed in Australia. This report presents research into four…

The National Science Foundation funded a project to: (1) identify major areas of science education research in which sufficient studies have been conducted to permit useful generalizations for educational practice; (2) conduct meta-analyses of each of these areas; and (3) prepare a compendium of these meta-analyses along with interpretative and…

A conceptual model is presented for the development of thinking skills by using an instructional model employing high level cognitive demands. "Distancing" is proposed as the concept to denote behaviors or events that separate the child cognitively from the immediate behavioral environment. Forms and functions of distancing behavior are…

Fifth in a series of abstract-bibliographies dealing with the various concrete issues and problems raised by population education workers in the course of undertaking population education programs, this volume reviews 67 publications published between 1970 and 1984, and gives examples of the different methodologies applied in population education…

While problem-based learning (PBL) has a relatively long history of successful use in medical and pre-professional schools, it has yet to be widely adopted by K--12 teachers. This may be due, in part, to the numerous challenges teachers experience when implementing PBL. In this paper, we describe specific hurdles that teachers are likely to…

Teaching enquiry methods, that is, skills concerned with constructing knowledge from available information and searching for new information, is the subject of this study, which provides a background to the subject as well as a review of research. The study sought to answer the question of whether problem-solving performances of primary school…

The philosophy underlying the African Primary Science Program, according to the author, is that the essence of science is not merely the statement of principles; it involves the struggle to find out about the material world. This program sought to develop the intellectual alertness of the children, and improve their questioning, and problem…