This study presents comparative case studies of preservice and first-year teachers' and expert teachers' conceptions of the concept of prior knowledge. Kelly's ("The Psychology of Personal Construct", New York: W. W. Norton, 1955) theory of personal constructs as discussed by Akerson, Flick, and Lederman ("Journal of Research in…

This study examined patterns of change in beliefs and practices as elementary teachers learned to establish instructional congruence, a process of mediating academic disciplines with linguistic and cultural experiences of diverse student groups. The study focused on six bilingual Hispanic teachers working with fourth-grade, mostly Hispanic…

Socioscientific issues encompass social dilemmas with conceptual or technological links to science. The process of resolving these issues is best characterized by informal reasoning which describes the generation and evaluation of positions in response to complex situations. This article presents a critical review of research related to informal…

Design-Based Science (DBS) is a pedagogy in which the goal of designing an artifact contextualizes all curricular activities. Design is viewed as a vehicle through which scientific knowledge and real-world problem-solving skills can be constructed. Following Anderson and Hogan's (1999) call to document the design of new science pedagogies, this…

Group learning has been embraced by many middle school teachers as a critical component of teaching and learning about science. Teachers have developed techniques to facilitate group learning, but sometimes wish for a better method to keep students on task, allow the teacher to track the progress of individual groups, and promote higher-level…

A Mrs. Jefferson, a sixth-grade lead science teacher, wandered through her students' art show, she enjoyed the creative drawings that her students did in art class. Next year, due to budget cuts, the art teacher would be shared with several other schools and would not have time for weekly art classes for every grade. The principal understood the…

The "Central Dogma" of genetics states that one gene, located in a DNA molecule, is ultimately translated into one protein. As important as this idea is, many teachers shy away from teaching the actual mechanism of gene translation, and many students find the concepts abstract and inaccessible. This article describes a unit, called Genetics…

Research indicates that students with exceptionalities such as visual impairments are more academically successful when they are included in the regular classroom setting and have opportunities to engage in active learning. Therefore, science educators must address their needs by motivating visually impaired students in science and making…

Current reform documents place a strong emphasis on students' understandings of the nature of science (NOS). Interestingly, the importance of this educational outcome is not new and has been agreed upon as important by most scientists and science educators for the past 100 years. Despite numerous attempts, including the major curricular reform…

Many science teachers recognize that teaching aspects of the history of science helps students learn science content and the nature of science (NOS). The use of history can potentially humanize science, help students refine their critical thinking skills, promote a deeper understanding of scientific concepts, and address common student…

This article examines the issue of multicultural science education as reflected in the published articles of "The Science Teacher" over the past decade. The goal of this review is to help teachers--especially new or preservice teachers and those who implement multicultural science education because of district mandates or changing classroom…

This article describes the Youth Network for Healthy Communities (YNHC). YNHC is a teacher-driven project in Washington State. Through YNHC, students research environmental health issues in their communities and present their findings to other students throughout the state via videoconferencing. YNHC focuses on environmental health science in the…

We report a study of three prospective secondary science teachers' development of theories-in-action as they worked together in a group to explore collisions using both physical manipulatives and a computer simulation (Interactive Physics). Analysis of their investigations using an existing theoretical framework indicates that, as the group moved…

In October 1981, an article appeared in "The American Biology Teacher" with the catchy title, "Bio-Bull." In it, author, Dale Carlson, described a powerful form of communication that he employed successfully in his community college classes. Each week students received what he called a "Bio-Bull" that included current biological topics,…

Although most high school students want their biology classes to include evolution, most high school biology classes in Minnesota do not emphasize evolution. This lack of an emphasis on evolution defies state educational standards and is associated with most students (high school and college) having serious misconceptions about evolution. The…