Describes the roles of science leaders in identifying and implementing meaningful solutions to systemic weaknesses. Discusses accountability's impact on science leadership and collaboration for enacting reform. (Contains 16 references.) (YDS)

Explores the research on argumentation in science education by focusing on two questions: (1) what should constitute argumentation?; and (2) what does research say about classroom conditions that promote, nurture, and sustain argumentation practices among students? Discusses possible barriers to argumentation and foundational frameworks and…

Presents a lesson plan for fourth or fifth graders integrating art and social studies. Explains the lesson focuses on the 50 State Quarters Program and emphasizes the inquiry method. Explains that students create their own quarter design for a state. Lists other inquiry projects using the quarter program. (CMK)

Explores the potential suitability of the press as a teaching resource for raising scientific literacy for citizenship within science education. Reports that the press is potentially a useful tool for teaching certain aspects of science and technology. (Contains 71 references.) (Author/YDS)

Describes an inquiry-based teaching method implemented in an undergraduate exercise physiology laboratory course. Indicates students' strong, positive feelings about the inquiry-based teaching method and shows that inquiry-based learning results in a higher order of learning not typically observed in traditional style classes. This teaching method…

Presents procedures for weather studies as exciting and relatively simple research projects for students to perform. Expects that students gain an accurate view of the scientific process in addition to real-world experience as they face challenging setbacks and make unexpected discoveries along the way. Includes cross-curricular applications.…

Describes a six-week Hero Inquiry project in detail so readers may implement similar units of study in their classrooms. Concludes that most of the students enjoyed the activities because they focused on strengthening skills for online research, and the hero theme was successful because students were allowed to research a self-selected topic of…

Investigates the predictive ability of two sociological theories of group decision making, the social decision scheme and the valence distribution model. Reports that student beliefs at the end of the simulation deviated from group consensus and that the two models could not account for the deviation. (Author/YP)

Four devalued, largely missing areas of teacher education should be reconsidered in reconstructing curriculum for teacher education: autobiography, inquiry, reflection, and critique. Preliminary results are discussed from a study of a year-long experimental teacher education program which incorporated these four components. (IAH)

Reviews the research regarding the use of laboratories in the teaching of science. Discusses the traditional process skills and adaptations of the learning cycle. Describes the four distinct characteristics of a Guided Inquiry Laboratory. Thirty-seven references are listed. (CW)

In literature instruction, a log notebook can help cultivate a critical consciousness through dialogical exercises involving the student's personal ongoing questioning, responding, rereading, reformulating, or revising earlier assignments. Sequences writing assignments can be used to stimulate dialectical thinking and writing. (MSE)

Investigates the use of mathematical representations in 3 grade-8 general science classes (n=65) that engaged in a 10-week open inquiry about the correlations between biological and physical variables in the environment. Demonstrates the use of representations as conscription devices, and illustrates how the use and understanding of inscriptions…

Describes a course teaching planetary science to elementary school students in collaboration with a university. Chronicles how a partnership between an elementary school teacher and a university-based research scientist effectively shaped the teacher's understanding of values and attitudes inherent in science education. Presents a model for…

Describes the use of an exploratory computerized approach to introduce first-year physics students to the ramifications of Newton's third law of motion. (JRH)

Reports a study analyzing the inquiry level of science activities within junior high science textbooks and their accompanying supplemental activity guides. (PR)