A study examined the role of science texts in classrooms and sought to determine how cognition, attitude/motivation, and socioeconomics affect conceptual change learning from texts in those classrooms. Subjects were students in three high-school science classes, one at each level of instruction: general, regular, and advanced. The classrooms were…

Demonstration of chemical reactions is a tool used in the teaching of inorganic descriptive chemistry to enable students to understand the fundamental concepts of chemistry through the use of concrete examples. For maximum benefit, students need to learn through discovery to observe, interpret, hypothesize, and draw conclusions; however, chemical…

The purpose of this study was to explore how adult users interact and learn during a computer-based simulation given visual and verbal forms of feedback coupled with embedded elaborations of the content. A total of 52 college students interacted with a computer-based simulation of Newton's laws of motion in which they had control over the motion…

This manual was developed by the Community Resource Curriculum Development Project (CRCDP), a cooperative project to develop multi-disciplinary, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural science/social sciences teaching units based upon the Illinois State Goals for Learning and Chicago public school outcomes for a seamless fifth and sixth grade cluster. This…

This guide is one of a set of 10 science guides, each covering a separate grade in Manitoba, together covering kindergarten through grade 9. The guides have been designed to provide a framework for building scientific concepts and developing the learning of process skills. They replace an earlier set of guides dated 1979. Each guide is essentially…

This document presents the results of three studies about how children interpret observations of the biological phenomena of decay. The objectives of this report were to: (1) document and compare the ideas used by elementary school children in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada; (2) document how these ideas changed from age 5 to 16;…

Spacewalking has captured the imagination of generations of children and adults since science-fiction authors first placed their characters on the moon. This publication is an activity guide for teachers interested in using the intense interest many children have in space exploration as a launching point for exciting hands-on learning…

A study investigated changes in prospective elementary teachers' conceptions about projectile motion. The preservice teachers (enrolled in reading methods courses) were either told or not told that they were expected to teach a videotaped lesson on projectile motion. In addition, they either participated in a combined demonstration-reading or in a…

This booklet provides information and five worksheets for elementary students studying the solar system. Fact sheets provide information on the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and comets. The worksheets are entitled: (1) Astronomical Unit; (2) Solar System Trivia; (3) Solar System Flash…

This research investigated the teaching of concrete chemical concepts and procedures to beginning chemistry students. Data were collected for this study from students enrolled in a university-level course for nonscience majors (n=171). In the topic studied, chemical bonding, four different teaching strategies were investigated: remediation of…

Students lacking formal training in physics have great difficulty predicting the paths of various projectiles. With respect to pendulum-bobs that are released from various points in a swing, a previous experiment found that empirical feedback (i.e., resultant trajectories) produced transfer-of-training to other pendular-based tasks. However, such…

This teacher's guide is part of a program of activities that help secondary-level students develop the complex thinking skills needed to succeed in science. This program can be used with current curriculum materials. It is designed to help students integrate ideas and develop concepts that demonstrate higher level thinking. A rich environment of…

The purpose of this book is to provide building blocks for designing and reviewing environmental education programs and activities. This handbook provides 600 basic concepts needed to attain the environmental education goals outlined at the Tbilisi, USSR, conference and generally agreed to be the fundamental core of quality environmental…

This book contains 114 experiments, mostly behavioral, with animals that are commonly found in nature. Each experiment is a five-step procedure: question, hypothesis, methods, result, and conclusion. Chapter 1 is devoted entirely to explaining these five steps, which together constitute the scientific method. The experiments are in the last part…

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of an STS curriculum (ChemCom) versus a traditional chemistry curriculum (GenChem) on student formal reasoning level. Cluster random sampling was used to select the sample (N=123). Gender differences in formal reasoning level were also investigated. The abbreviated GALT pretest was…