Points out the difficulties that English language learners may have and advocates that teachers help students acquire academic scientific language from words that can mean different things in science and be confusing. Recommends using graphic organizers, providing vocabulary support, and pre-writing and reading activities as possible ways to help…

Introduces the Environmental Inquiry (EI) program which focuses on five topics: watershed dynamics, environmental toxicology, ecology of invasive species, biodegradations, and urban ecosystem modeling. (YDS)

Describes an experiment in which students design the experiment and observe different liquids' effects on germination. Presents directions for laboratory writings. (YDS)

Discusses computer conferencing in higher education, presents a community of inquiry model that includes benefits of computer conferencing, and discusses social presence, defined as the ability of learners to project themselves socially and affectively into a community of inquiry. Topics include teacher immediacy, coding, and content analysis of…

Presents an activity that involves students in a hands-on, creative project in which they use higher order thinking skills while designing and studying the basics of floating devices. Focuses on inquiry, a number of scientific principles, and the relationship between mathematics and science. (ASK)

Questions whether more student-centered instruction is occurring in block scheduled biology classes than in traditional classrooms. Explains the results of the study in terms of academic achievement. First published in 1998. (YDS)

Provides an overview of the philosophy of "education-as-inquiry." Describes and examines a new Indianapolis, Indiana, public school, the Center for Inquiry, with 128 students and seven teachers, which follows an education-as-inquiry curriculum. Advocates an extended program of parent involvement at the center. (PA)

Presents a theoretical framework for evaluating inquiry tasks and how similar they are to authentic science. Suggests that inquiry tasks commonly used in schools evoke reasoning processes that are qualitatively different from the processes employed in real scientific inquiry, and school reasoning tasks appear to be based on epistemology that…

Investigates performance outcomes based on different goal orientations by using a computer support environment (SCI-WISE) designed for learning and doing inquiry-based science projects. Uses two versions of SCI-WISE software and systems based partly on the theoretical framework of levels of agency and goal orientation. (Contains 16 references.)…

Questions the goals of high school to college science education and compares what is achieved with traditional teaching strategies. Describes how science majors and non-science majors alike are based on an authentic field-based research. Explains the principles of best practices in undergraduate science education. (YDS)

Argues that teacher development should begin in pre-service education, should be humanistic and constructivist, and should encourage teacher's voices. One means for such development is teacher narrative research (inquiry built on teacher stories). Examples from students demonstrate how such research and narrative meet pre-service teachers' human…

Presents findings of the images of science drawn upon in laboratory work by upper secondary and university students in academic streams with a science focus. Questions required students to comment on laboratory investigations carried out by research scientists or science students. Shows that students' reasoning has an epistemological and an…

Examines how the Interrogative Model of Inquiry (I-Model), developed for the purposes of epistemology and philosophy of science, could be applied to analyze elementary school students' process of inquiry in computer-supported learning. Suggests that the interrogative approach to inquiry can be productively applied for conceptualizing inquiry in…

Reports on a teacher's changing perceptions during a collaborative, two-year interpretive research project involving two researchers, herself, and her students. Uses the collaborative approach between teacher and researchers to promote students' theory-evidence coordination and use of word explanations with an emphasis on developing and critiquing…

Presents an activity in which the amount of solar ultraviolet radiation in tree shade is measured at different times of the day and compared with changes in illumination levels and temperature. (Author/WRM)