The Council for Advancement and Support of Education's Professor of the Year, Vicente Villa, is a first-generation college graduate who teaches biology at Southwestern University (California). He began his study of biology in college and provides an important role model for Hispanic-American students. (MSE)

Describes problems in teaching problem solving and summarizes research in this area. Presents Guided Design or Guided Decision Making as a problem-solving approach in which groups of students work their way through a model of the problem-solving process as they wrestle with a discipline-specific situation. (PR)

Explores how notions of community and collaboration can be applied in program to enhance appreciation/use of and interest in science, mathematics, and computers among women and people of color. Describes Minority Studies Program at St. Cloud State University which has hosted summer program to provide minority and women students with intensive,…

The ways in which the concept of acceleration is treated in physics textbooks is compared with understandings of the concept demonstrated by final-year secondary (n=30) and first-year university students (n=60). Some students' understanding are shown to be incomplete in ways that parallel misleading or inaccurate textbook treatment of the concept.…

Explains how a useful stereo image for overhead projection can be easily produced using technology available to most teachers. Red and green transparency films and red/green glasses are used to produce the three-dimensional view. (PR)

Discusses physical disabilities and laws for "mainstreaming." Presents a checklist for classroom safety for the physically disabled. (PR)

Presents an activity to help students understand the precepts of the Hardy-Weinberg principle and simultaneously permit observation of a model of evolution through natural selection in a nonthreatening setting. (PR)

Describes a writing-across-the-curriculum course and its application to science courses. Shows how different kinds of writing instruction affect students' learning as well as students' attitudes, understandings, and approach to "writing to learn." (PR)

Explains that the use of data on CD-ROMs gives undergraduate students an economical way to work with real data on potentially publishable projects. Describes a student project using the data on the World WeatherDisc to find evidence of Indian Summer in Spokane, WA. (PR)

Describes a study of factors in the development of reasoning on the balance beam (n=34 nonscience majors in a Physical Science class). From this study and others, the author developed a model of problem solving and problem-solving behaviors. The implications of this model for instruction are discussed. (PR)

Describes a laboratory exercise that takes advantage of the abundant number of species of goldenrod galls that exist in the environment to explore a question concerning the behavior of the female gall-forming insects as they lay eggs on the goldenrod plant. (ZWH)

Structural equation modeling using the LISREL VI program was used to investigate predictors of female university students' participation in mathematics and science courses. Contributing significantly to the model were self-perceived mathematical ability, quality of experience in mathematics and science courses, importance to self-concept of…

Discusses the need for college science teachers to show students the fundamentals before expecting them to "dive in." Argues for the importance of homework in post-secondary science classes. (WRM)

Educational technology supports meaningful learning and enables the presentation of spatial and dynamic images, which portray relationships among complex concepts. The Technology-Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) involves media-rich software for simulation and visualization in freshman…

The ability to negotiate and resolve socioscientific issues has been posited as integral components of scientific literacy. Although philosophers and science educators have argued that socioscientific issues inherently involve moral and ethical considerations, the ultimate arbiters of morality are individual decision-makers. This study explored…