Describes personal experiences at the BioQUEST workshop titled "Approaches to Biology Education: Overcoming Social, Spatial, and Scheduling Constraints in Biology Education Reform." Describes activities and projects done at the workshop and discusses innovative curricula, flow charts, visualization, and case studies. Contains 12 references. (JRH)

Surveys of curriculum changes of (n=163) colleges and universities offering 4-year undergraduate programs in geology found that 77% revised their major geology programs in the previous 3 years and 74% reported that the greatest incentive for change was concern about pedagogy. Includes survey. (MKR)

Describes the Software Teaching of Modular Physics (SToMP), a software package that is structured to be a complete learning and teaching environment. Allows students to explore and learn about physics topics without necessarily having to refer to teachers or to other resources. (DDR)

Presents an activity to teach students how forests are managed to meet a variety of human and environmental needs. Involves students in thinking about forest uses, animals that live in forests, recreational activities in forests, and forest products. Teams pretend to be forest managers and develop strategies for managing forests for different,…

Outlines a sociocultural perspective on program evaluation consistent with sociocultural views of knowing and learning. Perspective is characterized by rigorous use of multiple-choice tests, performance assessments, and event-based analyses; a dialectical approach to conflicting conclusions from individual assessments and between individual and…

Describes how to make a magic crystal garden of dendritic salt crystals. Explains the theory and procedures involved. (DDR)

Surveys (n=1116) 15-year-old students from 11 Western Australian schools to determine their understanding of and attitude towards recent advances in modern biotechnology. Discusses reasons for students' over-estimation of the use of biotechnology in society. Provides a rationale for the inclusion of biotechnology, a cutting edge science, in the…

Reports on a two-year study designed to investigate how a Web-Based Integrated Science Environment (WISE) project called "Plants in Space" featuring classroom investigations enabled 5th grade students to increase their understanding of plant growth and development. Investigates two versions of the curriculum and considers how understanding of the…

Provides a critical analysis of the implementation of an innovative science curriculum at a middle school site. Explores the issues that surround teacher learning of new practices including the structures, policies, and practices that were in place within the reform context that supported or impeded teacher learning. Identifies parallels between…

Describes activities which utilize plastic drink bottles and are designed to foster the development of a wide range of biological and ecological concepts. Includes instructions for making a model compost column and presents a model that illustrates open versus closed ecosystems. (DDR)

Reports on a group of teachers using formative assessment tools to pilot their students toward deeper understanding. Suggests that their efforts help in the implementation of the district's inquiry-based science curriculum. (MM)

Describes the presence of earth science and changes in the science curriculum since the Committee of Ten, discusses improvements regarding teacher education, and suggests facilitating degrees in both geology and education to help geoscience education. (YDS)

Describes how earth and environmental science courses became one of three required courses for high school graduation in North Carolina and explains the arguments against and in favor of this curriculum change effort. (YDS)

Suggests that because controlled experiments are used extensively by professional ecologists to solve both theoretical and applied problems, experimentation should be a key component of secondary school ecology curricula. Describes five teaching principles to guide secondary school biology teachers in providing a more realistic view of the…

Considers the translation from Latin of Newton's First Law (NFL) in an historical perspective. Shows that Newton's original yields two versions of complimentary meanings, one temporal and the other quantitative. Reviews the presentation of NFL in physics textbooks and notes a decline in the status of NFL in the physics curriculum. (Contains 72…