Reports on a study designed to determine the importance of images to experienced chemists and the nature of images among learners, with particular attention to correlations with level of learning. Suggests that instructional methods should consider the student's ability to develop specific images appropriate to the chemical concepts. (TW)

Describes a multiple-choice instrument that reliably and validly diagnoses secondary students' understanding of photosynthesis and respiration in plants. Highlights the consistency of students' misconceptions across secondary levels and indicates a high percentage of students have misconceptions regarding plant physiology. (CW)

Discusses the concepts of relativity, mass, and energy, and the relationships between them. Argues that mass conservation inevitably follows from energy conservation. Proposes a scheme for introducing the laws relating to these concepts in general chemistry courses. (TW)

Discussion of changes in science education and scientific literacy is presented in the form of a dialog between the author and his alter ego. Structure of science, myths, facts, methods, and critical rationality are considered. Suggests that scientific principles once considered basic and unchanging are giving way to critical thinking. (DH)

Provides critiques, price lists, and computer requirements for selected population education software programs. Reviewed programs include: Demo-graphics; Malthus; Coexist; Rice Farming; Popgro; Manrgy; Population Growth; and Simpolicon. Addresses of the distributors are also provided. (ML)

Discusses how children's knowledge can be measured/described, knowledge patterns across diverse concepts, interaction of knowledge/learning, and ways children construct more advanced problem-solving rules to replace less adequate ones. Evidence, drawn from studies on children's acquisition of knowledge about balance beams, suggests that knowledge…

Educators from around the state, with the help of The Vermont Institutes, developed Science Grade Expectations as a means to identify the content knowledge and skills expected of all students for local assessment required under Act 68. This work was accomplished using the "Vermont's Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities,"…

This case study applies principles derived from the Center for Regenerative Studies (CRS) to a community college in North Carolina. CRS, on the campus of California State Polytechnic Institute (California), is dedicated to the education, demonstration, and research of degenerative systems in the areas of shelter, food production, energy, water and…

In this activity, students conduct several simple lab activities to learn about the five fundamental load types that can act on structures: tension, compression, shear, bending, and torsion. In Part One, students play the role of molecules in a beam subject to various loading schemes. In Part Two, students break foam insulation blocks by applying…

In science education, it is well understood that teachers' scientific conceptions can influence students' learning, but the extent to which students' knowledge influences teachers' ideas is not known. This paper describes a study of the mutual interaction of ideas between two second grade teachers, one teacher intern, and their classrooms during…

The purpose of this study was to investigate aspects of the Nature of Science (NOS) concepts and teaching practices acquired by inservice teachers who participated in a teacher education program at the National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan. Two instructors used both case-history and demonstration approaches to help science teachers…

This report describes a program for improving scientific literacy at the primary level. The target population consisted of pre-kindergarten and second grade students in an expanding suburban Midwestern community. An intervention which included the identification of scientific skills and their integration into the curriculum, student exposure to…

Project TEAM--Teacher Education for the Approaching Millennium--represents an educational partnership designed to improve science teacher preparation, content knowledge among both students and teachers, and the desire to better connect the theoretical constructs offered in a science methods course with the practical concerns expressed by students…

Study undertaken to determine the particular areas in science which are of common interest to intermediate grade boys and girls from three different environmental settings. (Authors)

Discusses the construction of lenses made out of ice, including the arrangement for mounting an ice lens on a camera. Also discusses brewing coffee in an ibrik (long-handled container tapering slightly toward the top), focusing on the physics of the brewing. (JN)