The crisis in physics education necessitates searching for new relevant meanings of physics knowledge. This paper advocates regarding physics as the dialogue among discipline-cultures, rather than as a cluster of disciplines to be an appropriate subject of science education. In a discipline-culture one can distinguish elements of knowledge as…

The purpose of this study was to examine middle childhood students' perceptions of the learning environment in a reform-based physics course. A lecture-style, introductory physics course was modified into an inquiry-based course designed for preservice middle childhood teachers through the collaborative efforts of faculty in the Colleges of…

Choices in science--allocation of research funds, selection of research topics, interaction with research subjects (animals, environment, other humans), etc.--often, if not always, include some ethical considerations. Future scientists need skills to deal with and discuss ethical problems, and for that reason we have developed and evaluated one…

Recent events in the United States have brought anti-evolution efforts into the forefront of the media's coverage of science education, and it makes press in Canadian outlets as well. Canadians can be regularly heard scoffing at American debacles such as the controversy regarding the denigration of evolution in Kansas's science standards, the…

This study first offers a defence of the view that natural science has transcultural intellectual characteristics relevant to its educational purposes and examines those characteristics under their ontic, epistemic, and value-related aspects. While the epistemic domain has been most prominent in relation to the science curriculum and its reform,…

The aim of the present study is to shed light on the conceptions that young students have of heat and temperature, concepts that are both important in school science curricula and closely related to daily life. The subjects of the study were students from a rural district in South Korea and they ranged in age from 4 to 11 years. Interviews were…

In this article, the author presents three themes that can form the basis for exciting world language instruction in Spanish, French, and Chinese at any grade level. These three themes (the prehistoric world; endangered species; and space exploration) use basic science as a context for communication that generates student excitement and enthusiasm…

Shelter, distribution of resources, adaptation and food sources are all key topics in teaching fifth grade students ecosystems. These terms and ideas are often presented in value neutral terms in the standard science curriculum. These terms have radically different connotations in different communities. In this paper students' fictional narrative…

The majority of research on the efficacy of ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) is based on research with urban elementary students (Rohrbeck, Ginsberg-Block, Fantuzzo, & Miller, 2003), with much less research in middle schools. This study investigated CWPT with 975 middle school students in 52 classrooms, grades 6 through 8, over a three-year period.…

In 1998, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) launched an ambitious effort to create on-line science courses for K-12 educators that would immerse them in exciting science topics and give them access to the Museum's scientific resources (scientists, research, expeditions, collections, and exhibitions). This project, called Seminars on…

This study explores the relationship, if any, between an individual's culturally based worldviews and conceptions of nature of science. In addition, the implications of this relationship (or lack of relationship) for science teaching and learning are discussed. Participants were 54 Taiwanese prospective science teachers. Their conceptions of…

This study is part of a larger investigation which focused on determining and comparing the perceptions of agriculture teachers and science teachers on integrating science into agricultural education programs. Science and agriculture teachers' perceptions of barriers to integrating science, the support of stakeholders, and collaboration between…

With the number of popular medical and forensics programs on television and many references in the media today, even elementary students can comfortably throw around terms such as "cells," "DNA," and "artificial products." However, their questions on these topics often go unanswered, or they are left with misinformation regarding these concepts.…

The standards movement arrived in the mid-1980s and new curriculum frameworks of instruction were crafted for the reform of science and mathematics curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for teachers. Today, the clarion warning calls about science and mathematics education, the fading STEM (science, technology,…

This paper examines the fundamental yet largely neglected distinction between school subjects and academic disciplines in the discourse on teachers' specialized subject-matter knowledge. It analyses and critiques the curricular positions embedded in that discourse in the light of five possible relationships between school subjects and academic…