This paper reports on research into how effective non-statutory guidance has been in managing the primary science curriculum in England. A small-scale qualitative study was used to elicit the views of teachers, local education authority advisors, an Ofsted inspector and a policy-maker. The findings indicate that the guidance is influencing the…

Robertson discusses the "perceived dichotomy" that permeates science teaching: teachers can either stress inquiry learning with lots of hands-on experiences or stress content knowledge and swap hands-on inquiry for direct instruction. Although a curriculum of unstructured hands-on science activities leads to shallow content knowledge, it is…

Recent legislation, such as the No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act amendments of 1997 and 2004, emphasizes the importance of teaching students with mild disabilities in the general education classroom using the general curriculum. Consequently, students with learning problems take a variety of science courses,…

Course designers adopted a language-learners approach to the online teaching of New Zealand secondary school students in the subject of astronomy. This was possible because the curriculum for astronomy that was in 2004 established as a part of New Zealand's national curriculum was specifically designed to engage underachieving students in science…

This paper aims to examine the nature of the new elementary school curriculum in Turkey. In particular, the authors provide a coherent picture of the fundamentals, basic elements and the classroom implications of the new curriculum development initiative in five content areas: mathematics, science, social science, life science, and Turkish. This…

This paper explores the history and processes associated with the transformation of a northern Canadian Aboriginal school into a culture-based community school for its Metis, Inuvialuit and Gwichin citizens. In particular, the role of the principal, a local Aboriginal, as a leader in initiating and facilitating the transformative change is…

Science testing, as mandated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, has refocused attention on the quality of the K-8 science curriculum and instruction in many districts around the country. It has become clear that to improve quality, and meet NCLB requirements, elementary and middle schools must develop different teaching approaches and…

Though deceptively simple to teach, chromatography presents many nuances and complex interactions that challenge both student and instructor. Time and instrumentation provide major obstacles to a thorough examination of these details in the laboratory. Modern chromatographic method-development software provides an opportunity to overcome this,…

A novel "Whiteheadean" science program was initiated in England and Wales in September 2006. Following a critical House of Commons report in 2002, the government altered the National Curriculum targets and thus forced the Examination Boards to alter their specifications in order to come in line. Assessment at GCSE level (i.e., the 14-16…

A comparative study was conducted to compare two approaches to engineering design curriculum between different schools (inter-school) and between two curricular approaches, "Project Lead the Way" (PLTW) and "Engineering Projects in Community Service" (EPIC High) (inter-curricular). The researchers collected curriculum…

Background: Most policy doctrines promote the use of scientific inquiry in the K-12 classroom, but good inquiry is hard to implement, particularly for schools with fiscal and safety constraints and for teachers struggling with understanding how to do so. Purpose: In this paper, we present the design of a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE)…

America's advantage has historically been its people's creativity, flexibility and entrepreneurship. But just as painters need to be proficient in technique and theory to produce great masterpieces, the next generation of Americans will likely require a solid grounding in mathematics and science for their creativity to be maximized in a world…

The objective of this study was to evaluate grade 9-12 students' motivation while engaged in two different engineering design projects: marble-sorter and bridge designs. The motivation components measured in this study were focused on students' intrinsic (IGO) and extrinsic (EGO) goal orientations, task value (TV), self-efficacy for learning and…

This policy research document is intended for Louisiana policymakers to use when examining possible changes to the state assessment's alignment with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2009 NAEP test is not yet in existence, so the purpose of this report is to give policymakers a head start in determining where they might,…

Australian Education Review (AER) 51 elaborates on issues raised by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Research Conference 2006: "Boosting Science Learning--What Will It Take?" It challenges current orthodoxies in science education and proposes a re-imagining that charts new directions for science teaching and…