Describes a high school pilot program to meet California's science curriculum guidelines to adopt a Scope, Sequence and Coordination (SS&C) approach. The SS&C curriculum offers four science subjects for each year of high school. Concrete, phenomenological, and descriptive topics are covered during the early years and theoretical and…

Introduces students to biological classification by having them classify music. (PR)

Proposes having students perform skits in which they play the roles of the science concepts they are trying to understand. Provides the dialog for a skit in which hot and cold gas molecules are interviewed on a talk show to study how these properties affect wind, rain, and other weather phenomena. (MDH)

Investigates preservice elementary teachers' theories about science teaching and learning through their reflections on integrated media case-based instruction. Constructs a profile of the teachers' images of themselves as future science teachers. Contains 43 references. (DDR)

Examines how science teachers' (n=14) knowledge of science and science pedagogy changed after participation in a constructivist-based methods course. More-experienced teachers were paired with less-experienced teachers, and pre- and post-instructional concept maps, journals, portfolios, and transcripts revealed that, within the zone of proximal…

Explores, through an analysis of students' experiences in an integrated science and social studies unit, how the students acquired new knowledge. Explains how students learned different things from the same classroom activities and how different classroom activities created different learning processes. Notes implications for design of classroom…

Attempting to increase reading engagement, a collaborative team implemented a year-long integration of reading/language arts and science instruction known as Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI). Compared to traditionally organized instruction, the CORI context increased strategy use, conceptual learning, and text comprehension more than…

Presents an activity designed to demonstrate how heating and cooling an air mass affects its temperature, volume, density, and pressure. Illustrates how thermal energy can cause atmospheric motion such as expansion, contraction, and winds. (Author/WRM)

Describes the development of a program fostering prospective and practicing elementary school teachers' research on their science-teaching practices, discussing the science-education community's recognition of the importance of teacher research, examining beliefs underlying development of the program, describing the program's setting, summarizing…

Describes and analyzes two science methods courses at the elementary and secondary levels for how they addressed four ideas: (1) how students learn science; (2) how teachers teach science to students; (3) how prospective science teachers learn about the first two ideas; and (4) how methods instructors teach prospective science teachers about the…

Reviews collateral learning theory as a cognitive explanation for how pupils cope with disparate worldviews mediated by transcending cultural borders between their everyday culture and the culture of science. Proposes a new pedagogy in which teachers assume the role of culture broker in the classroom to achieve culturally sensitive curriculum and…

Explores the perceptions held by practicing engineers of what is involved in learning to solve technological problems and examines their pedagogical approaches to technological problem-solving in elementary-classroom contexts. Concludes that recognition of the nature of each occupation is needed to realize a potential of collaboration between…

Offers suggestions for incorporating topics that relate to the Apollo 13 space mission into a chemistry course. Discusses connections between the study of chemistry and space exploration, including fuels and oxidants used, reasons for an oxygen tank rupture, and lithium hydroxide-containing carbon dioxide filters. Contains 11 references. (WRM)

Presents information about and ideas for teaching an evolutionary view of ethics. Argues that when behavioral and moral aspects of human evolution are presented in biology courses in lieu of anatomical and physiological aspects, students may become more accepting of evolutionary theory. Contains 16 references. (WRM)

Investigates the conceptual-change process in grade 10 students during a computer-supported physics unit. Finds that many students vacillated between alternative and scientific conceptions from one context to another during instruction, and those few students who did exhibit context-independent and stable conceptual change appeared able to accept…