This book is based on the premise that students apply thinking skills to learning science concepts and principles by doing through direct, firsthand experiences in an interactive, open atmosphere; constructing by building their knowledge through guided inquiry; and connecting by relating their learning to the world around them. The contents of…

Research on student use of digital resources identifies the challenges associated with utilizing the World Wide Web (WWW) while involved in on-line inquiry activities in the science classroom. On-line materials alone do not suffice in providing the guidance students require to effectively ask questions, plan searches, and analyze the results of…

The Partnering for Elementary Environmental Science program provides a professional development model to improve elementary science education. The program pairs teachers with science content experts and instructs the partnership teams in the pedagogy essential for effective inquiry science. This paper reports a year-long qualitative study of nine…

This is the second book in a sequence of four volumes written and designed for parents of students of science, particularly for those at the lower and upper elementary and junior high or intermediate level, senior high students, college students preparing to teach science, and all those individuals who are interested in science and the application…

Higher education administrators often wonder if the information they receive from the low response rates to surveys of non-matriculating applicants accurately reflects the entire population of these non-matriculants. These questions are exacerbated by evidence that response bias does exist. This paper describes how St. Mary's College in Notre…

This study explores how an Inquiry-Based Demonstration Classroom (IBDC) professional development program affects the extended inquiry instruction of secondary science teachers and how teachers view their extended inquiry practice while involved in the IBDC professional development program. To assess the impact of the program on participants'…

This case study explores the ways in which a beginning elementary classroom teacher gains a foothold in teaching science. The analysis includes episodes from the teacher's first three years of teaching while participating in an educational research project that investigated an inquiry-based approach to teacher professional development. The…

For years, the case study approach to learning has helped connect formal learning with real life situations. Cases offer a means of combining the content to be taught and processes by which it will be taught, and it provides students with a situation for learning that makes sense to them and connects them to what they know in a meaningful way. The…

From a science perspective, inquiry-oriented instruction engages students in the investigative nature of science. Inquiry involves activity and skills, but the focus is on the active search for knowledge or understanding to satisfy a curiosity. This digest further describes the distinguishing features of inquiry-oriented science instruction and…

Reports about U.S. schools have indicated the need for improvement of science teaching and learning. One of the solutions advocated calls for classroom contexts that allow for authentic practice under the guidance of teachers who model pertinent skills as practitioners in the field of study. The metaphor used to describe such teaching-learning…

This paper attempts to trace a line of theory development in technical communication from Dwight Stevenson's 1977 call for "instrumental effectiveness" in theoretical inquiries, based upon careful inductive research methods, to later examples of more speculative and inadequately documented theories about what constitutes the field's…

This report describes and interprets findings from a 1981-82 national assessment in science conducted by the Minnesota Science Assessment and Research Project (SARP). SARP tested 18,000 students randomly selected from across the nation. The assessment instruments included items on science content, inquiry, role of science and technology in…

The first chapter in this booklet about teaching and the art of questioning defines educative questions which advance pedagogical purposes, classroom processes, and educational ends and facilitate student thinking and class participation. Examples throughout the publication are in the form of recorded and transcribed actual classroom discourse,…

When asked to give a talk at a mathematics teacher conference that focused on research in mathematics education, Ruhama Even viewed the invitation as an opportunity to address the meta-question: what can teachers learn from research in mathematics education? The reason for her view was her way of feeling, as a researcher and teacher educator, that…

Higher level questions can link evaluation directly to language related class activities. Utilizing higher level questions is a powerful pedagogical technique and serves many direct purposes in the class environment. One of the models most commonly taught to teachers is Hilda Taba's levels of questions. Taba's model delineates four related…