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The article comments on the dilemma of the objective paper-and-pencil assessment within the Piagetian framework in the U.S. Paper-and-pencil measures also lack the flexibility of the clinical method in which a perceptive interviewer can explore the various ways in which a subject interprets his or her environment. Paper-and-pencil instruments attempt to retain various aspects of the clinical interview method. It must be noted that many measures of formal operational reasoning also assess other cognitive capabilities such as field independence.

The article discusses the advantages of the term project type of assignment over term papers in learning science. The purpose and meaning of an individual's educational experience is transmitted through a term project. While educators are becoming increasingly skeptical as to whether or not term papers have value in proportion to the time and energies required of both the undergraduates and the instructors, the level of interaction is compulsion. The sample of knowledge covered by a term project is not great, but apparently that sample will be remembered for a long, long time. The opportunity to think through a problem and find a solution proved to be an intriguing and pleasant experience.

The vision for science proficiency presented in A Framework for K‐12 Science Education calls for significant shifts in both teaching and assessment. In this paper, we describe an effort to develop and validate a set of proximal transfer tasks for high school biology classrooms where teachers were implementing a problem‐based curriculum. The proximal transfer tasks presented students with phenomena related to but distinct from the phenomena they had studied in class and asked students to apply their understanding of disciplinary core ideas, practices, and crosscutting concepts targeted in curriculum. We tested these tasks with a sample of 733 students from 11 teachers' classes. Each of these students completed two tasks before beginning the unit and two tasks after they had finished the unit. We found that nearly all pretest and posttest task pairs were aligned to written opportunities to learn in the curriculum, that is, students showed significant growth over the course of a unit. In addition, task pairs revealed differences across teachers. However, the relative growth of students depended on which tasks students completed, indicating wide variation in task difficulty. Our findings point to the potential of developing three‐dimensional proximal transfer tasks and to the difficulty of constructing equivalent tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore how physical science doctoral students navigate their role identities throughout their graduate programme. Physical science doctoral students take on many academic roles in addition to the role of scientist, including researcher, educator, and student. When social expectations of roles become internalized, they become role identities. We examined doctoral students' academic role identities as a complex system to unpack factors that constrain the behavior and define the nature of doctoral students' academic role identities. This multiple case study used open‐ended reflective questions and narrative‐style interviews with eight physical science doctoral students to explore how physical science doctoral students navigate their role identities throughout their graduate programme and the factors that may influence these identities. Responses to the reflective questions and narrative interview transcripts were qualitatively coded and salient themes are drawn through cross‐case analysis. Themes were compared across data sources to further validate the findings. Participants ascribed the most value to researcher and student identities and the least value to an educator identity. Time spent in a role, institutional recognition, advisor relationships, community in graduate school, and interest were factors that participants perceived to influence their role identities, along with the gender identity of women. Implications highlight the ways in which institutions may be able to support doctoral students in graduate school, including increased support for time management, equitable opportunities for authentic research experiences, equitable support in advisor relationships, and the importance of intentionally fostering community within science departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of research in improving science education in the U.S. The understanding of the process of teaching, learning, and schooling has improved. Thus, rapid societal changes has an impact on the image of the process of schooling in general, and the process of teaching and learning science in particular. With this regard, teachers must engage in constructing a curriculum to enhance the development of all students. Lastly, research should guide and inform policy formation and decision making regarding science teaching, preschool through college.

The article presents a critique of papers by Professors Atkins and Karplus on elementary science education. The author indicates the personal biases that she brings to the discussion of the two reports. The article discusses Atkins and Karplus' assumption that the modern world demands a citizenry that is literate with respect to both concepts and the methods of science. The author comments on Atkins and Karplus' recognition that children differ widely both in their abilities to grasp ideas and in the ways they arrive at conclusions.

The article presents an author's comment on the article "The Problem of Technology in the Study of Student Conceptions in Science," by I. O Ambiola. Abimola raises a fundamental issue about the study of students' conception in science, and asserts the importance of the study is in the need for researchers and readers to understand the nature and implications of the terminology used in reporting research. The author's response to Abimola is motivated by the desire to strengthen the arguments about the importance of terminology by raising two related issues which run counter to some other aspects of the paper. These arguments include other significant factors, apart from views of science, which influence researcher's use of terminology to label misconceptions, and the value of seeking a single descriptor for conceptions.

The article looks into the significant use of pseudo-science in science education. A pseudo-science is a systematic body of propositions, practices, and attitudes that gives the appearance of being a science but is not a science. Furthermore, the article has compared the differences between science and pseudo-science. Moreover, various approaches and ways in which the study of pseudo-science could be incorporated into science education has been presented through: (1) critical examination of historical cases of pseudo-science along with cases of genuine science; (2) comparison of contemporary research paper with pseudo-science research paper; (3) use of laboratory works and processes to expose the scientific pretensions of pseudo-science; encouragement of students to bring examples of pseudo-scientific thinking; (5) evaluation of textbooks; and (6) testing of students' ability to recognize cases of pseudo-science.

Students studying in government-run schools in rural India possess much experiential knowledge of the world around them. This paper presents a narrative account of an ethnographic exploration of such students as they attempted to learn about electricity in an eighth-grade classroom in a government-run schools in a village in India. The paper shows how students having a rich experience with household electric circuits attempt, in a contingent and situated manner, to negotiate their role as students and participate in the school science discourse. The students' actions expressed agency that was contingent, situated, and aimed at selective appropriation of school science discourse for their own purposes. Such expressions of student agency indicate rich possibilities for meaningful learning of science in rural schools in India provided school science is made relevant for their lives and concerns. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed92:297–319, 2008 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates techniques for assessing and representing information in cognitive structure by researchers from Madison, Wisconsin. Researchers in science education should focus increased attention on science content as a research variable. With this admonition in mind, an attempt has been made to describe means by which in science students' cognitive structures might be assessed and then graphically represented. Both the assessment and representation techniques described in this paper deal with meaning and consequently could be of great value in learning studies.

The article describes a method of teaching some important phases of technical writing as part of a normal laboratory course. Faculty member employing this technique selects a suitable paper from the literature, prepares a sentence outline and introduces a small number of flaw into the paper. Then, the material is retyped and handed to the students to be analyzed. For a simplified version of this method, only step one will be used and the discussion will be modified. The simple technique can be refined by introducing more subtle flaws into the discussion and include the introduction, the summary and conclusion or even the experimental section and the result.

The article explains a group-individual project for teaching the concept of refraction in physics. The project must be of such a nature that it can be presented to a large number of students simultaneously, assigning different values to each student, still its solution must be easily and readily checked by the instructor. A sample problem is regarding the least possible time required for a man who wishes to start from a point A and walk to point B. The interpretation of this problem as a teaching asset of course lies in the fact that it explains why light bends the way it does in passing from a less dense to a denser medium. For the instructors sake, it may be worthwhile to add a few explanatory remarks with the use of a graph paper locating A in one corner of he paper and B in the diagonally opposite corner and calling the distance from the top of the paper to the line of separation.

ABSTRACT Opportunities for the development of science-related pedagogy during training are necessarily limited for the generalist primary (elementary), preservice teacher. While school placement is an important context within which to develop such professional expertise, the role of institution-based learning is less well understood in this regard. This paper explores the generation of science-related pedagogy as preservice primary teachers learn about the traditionally challenging subject of forces as part of their institution-based science education course. Findings illustrate how critical interpretation of the school curriculum is informed as a consequence of preservice teachers developing metacognitive awareness of their own learning of science. A subject matter learning audit provides a framework to enable the teachers to analyze their learning and apply their perspectives to the primary curriculum through focusing attention on the abstract and counterintuitive nature of forces. Pedagogic insight emerges as the student-teachers craft successive reflective accounts of their own understanding of forces and interpret the curriculum relating to forces. In doing so, they begin to translate their learning as pedagogical apparatus for their future work with pupils. The paper concludes with discussion of some implications for the role of institution-based learning in the development of pedagogical subject knowledge in science. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 97:410-441, 2013 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes research on the use of journals in a general education chemistry course for elementary education majors. In the journals, students describe their understanding of a topic, the development of that understanding, and how the topic connects to their lives. In the process, they are able to engage in reflection about several things. How the frequency and nature of those reflections relate to overall course outcomes, the content and quality of final exam essays on those topics, and student metacognition in problem solving are the basis of this paper. The following types of reflections were identified in the journals: action, prior knowledge, project ideas, text resources, classroom events, and monitoring of knowledge. A multiple linear regression analysis of the students' final course grade earned versus student grade point average (GPA), composite score on the ACT exam, the number of reflections made for each reflection type, and the total number of reflections made throughout all journals was used to determine the significance of the type of reflections made by students in relationship to their chemistry content understanding. The results indicate that students' prior GPA and their reflections on classroom events and their own knowledge correlate positively and significantly with a final course grade. However, student reflections on text resources have a negative and significant correlation with the final course grade. In addition, students' journal entries and final exam responses were coded for similarities in writing. The results indicate that those students who had strong similarities in writing for both their journal and final exam exhibited significantly stronger content understanding on the final exam essay. Finally, metacognition in problem solving, assessed with the Metacognitive Activities Inventory (MCA-I) survey of metacognition, was also positively correlated with the types of reflection that correlate with overall course performance. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 96:543-565, 2012 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to further articulate multicultural science education scholarship. In particular, it explores the notions of borders and border epistemologies as intellectual resources to think again about the challenges of science education in the global world that demand more sophisticated concepts to unravel some of its complexities. It responds in part to Osborne's (2007) call for more “armchair science education” to “develop better theories about our goals and values” (p. 11). Borders and border spaces reconceptualize and extend the view of borders typically presented within the literature as unproblematic lines between cultures and knowledges that need to be crossed. The constructs of border epistemologies introduce to science education the work of cultural theorists, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Walter Mignolo. Collectively, their scholarship helps to theorize alternative epistemologies from the Global South that argue social and political justice must be premised within epistemological justice. I finish by problematizing some of these ideas for ongoing thinking around multicultural approaches to science education. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed94:428–447, 2010 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New views of proficiency in K-8 science that highlight the importance of engaging children in the discourses and practices of science have raised the stakes for elementary teachers and the teacher educators who prepare them. In this paper, a framework for teaching science as argument is presented. The framework is advanced as a means of addressing problems of practices faced by preservice teachers, creating coherence for the design of teacher education experiences, and serving as a tool for shaping a design-based research agenda. Findings of three research studies that examined preservice teachers' developing understandings and practices for teaching science as argument and the ways in which teacher education experiences mediated learning are synthesized. Across the studies, findings suggest that the framework serves as a powerful scaffold for preservice teachers' developing thinking and practice. More specifically, early attention to evidence and argument can leverage other important aspects of effective science teaching, such as attention to classroom discourse and the role of the teacher in monitoring and assessing children's thinking. In closing, a case is made for coherence among science learning opportunities, learning to teach science experiences, and field experiences. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed93:687–719, 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science education reform has long focused on assessing student inquiry, and there has been progress in developing tools specifically with respect to experimentation and argumentation. We suggest the need for attention to another aspect of inquiry, namely mechanistic reasoning. Scientific inquiry focuses largely on understanding causal mechanisms that underlie natural phenomena. We have adapted an account of mechanism from philosophy of science studies in professional science [Machamer, P., Darden, D., & Craver, C. F., (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67, 1–25] to develop a framework for discourse analysis that aids in identifying and analyzing students' mechanistic reasoning. We analyze a discussion among first-grade students about falling objects (1) to illustrate the generativity of the framework, (2) to demonstrate that mechanistic reasoning is abundantly present even in these young students, and (3) to show that mechanistic reasoning is episodic in their discourse. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed92:499–525, 2008 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An appendix of resources that relates to the articles that appeared in the September 1979 issue of "Science Education" are presented.

This article explores objectification in science education, i.e., the way material is turned into an object of interest to scientists. Drawing on sociological and anthropological drama theory, it examines how objectification does and occur in class rooms and schools. To understand the role and relationship of the object to the scientist, look at current literature from the social studies of science concerning human and nonhuman objects as well as my own ethnographic work on the activism of politicized human research subjects. The paper concludes by how and why a more self-conscious focus on the object of science is important for those concerned with equity in science education, suggesting that such guinea pig pedagogies restore missing historical and ethical dimensions to science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the conceptualizations, or mental models, of the nature of the bonding and structure of metals of a group of U.K. college students. It is suggested that these mental models may be understood in terms of the students' prior learning about covalent and ionic bonding, and the prevalence of a common alternative conceptual framework for chemical bonding labeled "the octet framework." This study illustrates the prominence of prior learning in channeling the interpretation of subsequent teaching, and highlights the significance of the decisions made by curriculum planners, textbook authors, and teachers on the order of presenting subject content, the degree of simplification of scientific models, and the selection and presentation of metaphors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article views on the effect of high school physics and college laboratory instruction on achievement in college physics. The result of the investigation of this subject matter probes that the paper-pencil laboratory pre-test and post-test scores suggested the existence of differences between boys and girls, between the students enrolled in the course with laboratory and those taking the same course without laboratory. It was also desirable to explore the effect of high school physics.

The article comments on the principle that only papers which represent a genuine contribution to the literature of science education should be published in the journal. The author has developed guidelines for determining what a genuine contribution to the literature consists of. These guidelines are stated as considerations about the paper's significance and organization and the quality of the writing.

ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyze the relation between particular, contingent, and general aspects of a school science activity and show how they are intertwined in nontrivial ways as students give explanations for how a real galvanic cell works during conversations with a researcher. The conversations were examined by using practical epistemology analysis, which made it possible to follow students' meaning making in detail. The analysis revealed interactions between generic explanations of electrochemistry and the distinctions and correlations that were connected to particulars and contingencies of the galvanic cell. Consequences of these interactions amounted to becoming reminded of knowledge one had come across before, being able to connect distinctions of particular features of the cell to generalized chemical explanations, and realizing which aspects may be excluded from the account. The results indicate that learning in science needs to be approached more as a contingent process than as something that progresses along one particular dimension. They show how students appropriate the sociocultural tools of science and how they situate what they learn in both the particular features of the activity and in the relevant science. Hence, there is a need for more inclusive accounts of how students progress toward increased competency in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the assessment of potential difficulties in comprehending fourth grade science textbooks. the primary characteristics of expository text which contribute to comprehension are complexity of the content area, structural form of the text and text reading level. These characteristics influence the ease with which a reader can process and retain information from text. This paper is designed to present the results of the three components of science text. The purpose of this paper is to show that reading level distribution of used elementary science texts may interfere with the potential understanding of the science texts. The analysis presented focuses on three objectives which are enumerated in the article.

The article discusses findings and recommendations in relation to the eight initiatives provided by the Science Council of Canada for science education development. The initiatives are summarized as follows : (1) Guaranteeing science education in every elementary school; (2) Increasing the participation of young women in science education; (3) Challenging high achievers and science enthusiasts; (4) Presenting a more authentic view of science; (5) Emphasizing the science-technology-society connection; (6) Setting science education in a Canadian content; (7) Introducing technology education; (8) Ensuring quality in science education.

The article discusses a study on the nature of conceptions of junior high school pupils in Israel on some aspects of the particle model of matter. Researchers investigated how the pupils assimilated the particle model in their program titled "The Structure of Matter" which is centered into the three states of matter. The researchers used the Piaget-type interview since they felt that the paper-and-pencil test was not enough for its aim. The three aspects least absorbed by pupils in the results indicated the need for a larger expressed support of these aspects in pupils' ongoing learning activities. The researchers recommended that the results of the study can be useful in the development of teacher training exercises on pupil's thinking.

The article explains revisions on the Science curricula of Japan and the introduction of a new Basic Science curricula. The paper describes science in the revised curricula which includes the newly set-up Basic Science in addition to Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Earth Sciences. The authors state that Basic Science aims at the acquisition of integral ways of thinking and observing nature through studying the course alone and is similar to the integrated science courses in other countries. The paper outlines the nature, objectives, content, and treatment of Basic Science.

Various features of scientific discourse have been characterized in the science education literature, and challenges students face in appropriating these features have been explored. Using the framework of conceptual metaphor, this paper sought to identify explicit and implicit metaphors in pedagogical texts dealing with the concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, an abstract and challenging domain for learners. Three university-level textbooks were analyzed from a conceptual metaphor perspective, and a range of explicit and implicit metaphors were identified. Explicit metaphors identified include entropy as disorder, thermodynamics processes as movements along a path, and energetic exchange as financial transactions among others. Implicit metaphors include application and elaboration of the generic Location Event Structure metaphor, application of the Object Event Structure metaphor, and others. The similarities and differences between explicit and implicit metaphors found in the textbooks are also described. Two key pedagogical implications are discussed: that the selection of explicit instructional metaphors can be guided by consistency with implicit metaphors; and that the range of implicit metaphors found in pedagogical texts implies that a multiple instructional metaphor strategy is warranted. The depth of the phenomenon of conceptual metaphor and its implications for future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the teaching of science to deaf students in the U.S. It notes that language development, the primary goal of deaf education, can be achieved through science if appropriate methods and techniques are utilized. Here, the author has made an effort to include as many as sources in this review as possible. There are probably omissions, but the work reported should provide a substantial base for individuals considering teaching science to the deaf. The organization of the article is as follows: books relating to science for the deaf; then articles, papers or reports dealing with the elementary, secondary, and college levels respectively.

The paper presents a general paradigm for the structuring of a science course behaviorally and cites examples of behavioral schema from the life sciences. The first step in structuring a course behaviorally is to decide upon the terminal behaviors. These behaviors indicate what the student should be able to do when he completes the program. The essence of good curriculum development is the sequencing of instructional paradigms to maximize learning and minimize the duplication of previously learned material. Behavioral objectives should form an integral part of the process.

The article focuses on the teaching of science for the development of student's creativity. Creativity in science implies the ability to make a discovery in science though such information is already known to others. According to the author, to promote creativity, the science teacher should encourage students to identify and state the problems. The author emphasized that the ability of the pupil to design experiments to solve the problems which is defined by the pupil is another aspect of science creativity. The author's theory about selected teaching methods such as problem solving, open-ended experiments and research projects, if taught under given conditions can promote student creativity in science classes.

The article focuses on the identification that restricts the problem solving. In other words when a student was able to define a problem situation differently than he had previously defined it, solution became easier. If the students who scored low on the "IS of Identity" test also scored low on the problem solving test. The research would be in order to determine whether problem solving will be best insured by directing the attention toward correction of faulty language habits than by other methods. The "problem solving" test had to be one which did not rely on previously learned materials and methods.

The article presents an analysis of the mathematical concepts necessary for the college physical science course in the U.S. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the physical science course at Western Michigan University to determine the mathematical concepts with which the student must be familiar in order to understand the physical concepts involved in the course material. According to the author the outline of the workbook prepared by the physical science staff at the university constitutes the outline of the material to be studied and includes wealth of questions and exercises.

The article examines the basic themes around which science fiction stories for children seem to be written in the U.S. This article involves an interplay between two theses. One, which suggests that adult science fiction plays upon those human values and satisfactions which may be closely related to those which motivate practicing scientists. The second thesis and the primary one developed in this paper, suggests that children's science fiction may be similarly related to whatever satisfactions keep young people interested in science.

The article discusses the significance of studies based on the learning approach in education in the U.S. The purpose of this paper is to draw out the educational implications from a number of studies and to compare the fruitfulness of two general methods of research called the personality approach and learning approach. An experiment was conducted on the effect of a number of controlled variables on Einstellung behavior. Einstellung is defined as the blinding effect presumably due to strong habits which stand in the way of elicitation of more successful modes of response. The finding that a mental set for speed in problem solving was followed by perseveration suggests that the whole tempo of teaching should be studied in relation to rigid tendencies. Another study on the effect of effort on Einstellung behavior in a maze-tracing situation is discussed.

The article discusses the significance of studies based on the personality approach in education in the U.S. The purpose of this paper is to examine a number of studies conducted in the personality approach framework and to show the kinds of educational implications involved. A study is said to have educational implications if the data suggest testable statements about educational concerns and the study itself is reasonably sound. This study suggests that it would be worthwhile to rate school children in terms of overt manifestation of submissiveness and rigidity to check the feasibility of diagnosing rigid tendencies through the extent submissiveness is shown. On the other hand, the personality approach is characterized by an emphasis upon identifying traits that are said to be the basic components of behavior structure.

The article discusses the basis of selecting science learning materials in the elementary level in New York City. It explains on the eagerness of adults and children to learn about and make use of new scientific developments. It focuses on the need for science learning materials on the elementary level to make the pursuit of science by young people. It provides information on the potentialities of using science learning materials by youngsters in the elementary level.

There is evidence that science teachers give naive responses to direct questions about the nature of science. However, there is also evidence that such responses underpredict the more sophisticated knowledge that teachers may use in classroom situations. The purpose of this study was to characterize the informal ideas used by teachers in situations directly relevant to their teaching of science. The sample comprised 50 Mexican primary school teachers. Three areas of informal expertise were addressed: scientists and their work; scientific inquiry; and data measurement. The teachers' thinking was explored through questionnaires and semistructured interviews using pedagogically relevant contexts. The database was analyzed first to describe ideas shared by teachers and second to identify any recurrent themes and patterns among responses. Teachers' responses were characterized around four areas of discourse: demarcation of science; scientific procedures; approaches to reliable knowledge; and professional and institutional features of science. The teachers' responses were diverse in their contextualization, that is, they incorporated specific background and contextual details to a different extent. Most responses showed limited or intermediate contextualization across all four areas of discourse, though some more sophisticated responses were noted. A general framework was developed to characterize this diversity in teachers' responses. This paper concludes with a discussion of the extent to which this sample of teachers was equipped to discuss the nature of science in pedagogical contexts and, given their starting points, how they might be supported in developing their expertise in doing this. Implications for teacher education and curriculum development are presented. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed94:282–307, 2010 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching literacy in inquiry-based science-teaching settings has recently become a focus of research in science education. Because professional scientists' uses of reading, writing, and speaking are foundational to their work, as well as to nonscientists' comprehension of it , it follows that literacy practices should also be central to science teaching. Science as a vehicle through which to develop literacy skills is an attractive alternative that some teachers choose in order to include science in their curriculum. In this paper, we present descriptions of three elementary teachers' efforts to teach literacy practices through science. Our descriptions, through which we illustrate a range of ways in which teachers link science and literacy instruction, are grounded in these teachers' accounts and our observations of their teaching. We end with a comparison of these teachers' approaches, and draw from this analysis considerations for implementing literacy instruction in elementary science education. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed93: 189–217, 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity formation is a critical dimension of how and why students engage in science to varying degrees. In this paper, we use the lens of identity formation, and in particular identities in practice, to make sense of how and why Melanie, over the course of sixth grade, transformed from a marginalized member of the science class with a failing grade to a highly valued member of the sixth-grade science community with a perfect score of a 100% for the sixth-grade exit project. Our findings reveal that the different figured worlds of the science classroom, such as whole class, small group work, and individual work, offered Melanie different affordances for identity formation that were built upon across such spaces, in both productive and unproductive ways. Our findings also take up the kinds of critical roles that members of her classroom community, in particular teacher and peers, play in supporting and constraining such a transformation. We discuss the implications identity formation has for understanding issues of gender equity and science learning. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed92:567–590, 2008 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares the nature of the textual construction of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) science test items and the Greek school science textbooks. This nature is determined by the interplay of the notions of classification (content specialization) and formality (code specialization) modulated by both the linguistic and the visual expressive modes. The results of the relevant analysis showed that the textual materials employed in PISA and in school textbooks are oppositional in nature. Specifically, while the linguistic mode of the PISA items tends to resemble texts falling within the public domain (nonspecialized content and code), the corresponding visual mode tends to resemble texts of the esoteric domain (specialized content and code) thus familiarizing students with the specialized conventions and ways of representing entities falling within the realm of technoscientific knowledge. On the other hand, school science textbooks tend to employ the linguistic and the visual mode in exactly the opposite way. These differences between PISA science items and school science textbooks could contribute to a disorientation of the students in relation to what is expected in each specific context. This disparity could potentially be one of the factors explaining the low level of Greek students' attainment in PISA. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed92:664–687, 2008 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We believe that physics education has to meet today's requirement for a qualitative approach to Quantum Mechanics (QM) worldview. An effective answer to the corresponding instructional problem might allow the basic ideas of QM to be accessed at an early stage of physics education. This paper presents part of a project that aims at introducing a sufficient, simple, and relevant teaching approach towards QM into in-/preservice teacher education, i.e., at providing teachers with the indispensable scientific knowledge and epistemological base needed for a reform of science education along the aforementioned line. The investigation of teacher-learners' (t-ls') initial knowledge indicated that their main misconceptions appear to be the result of their pre-/inuniversity traditional instruction, which causes the overlapping/mix-up of the conceptual frameworks of Classical Physics (CP) and QM. Assuming that these misconceptions form by nature epistemological obstacles to the acquisition of QM knowledge, the educational strategy proposed here aims at leading t-ls to form a conceptual structure that includes CP and QM as two totally independent conceptual systems. Accepting, furthermore, that the complete distinction of these systems demands a radical reconstruction of t-ls' initial knowledge, we present here an instructional model that bases the required reconstruction on the juxtaposition of two models that constitute the signal point of twentieth century's "paradigm shift": (a) Bohr's semiclassical atom model, and (b) the model of the atom accepted by modern physics theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents three classroom procedures for presenting the concept of "mechanism" in biology. The term "mechanism" used in this article refers to the biological phenomena that can be accounted for a series of cause-and-effect relationships. The basis of this paper is the prevalence of anthropomorphic and teleological explanations. Each of the three classroom procedures described includes a paper-and-pencil exercise. The author of this article discusses the importance of clarifying the concept of mechanism, especially pointing out the fallacy of teleological explanations.

ABSTRACT We teach a course for elementary education undergraduates that gives students an opportunity to conduct open-ended scientific inquiry and pursue their own scientific questions in much the same way that practicing research scientists do. In this study, we compared what our students say declaratively about the nature of science (NOS) in surveys and interviews with what they do procedurally when engaged in authentic scientific practice. Initially, we were surprised when our students showed very little change on two different validated NOS questionnaires, adhering to seemingly memorized definitions of key NOS vocabulary such as 'science' and 'experiment.' In contrast, on procedural measures of NOS understanding, students developed a decidedly sophisticated approach to answering scientific questions. Our data suggest that students' declarative understandings about the NOS are not a reliable measure of students' ability to engage productively in scientific practices and vice versa. We discuss why this might be and consider the implications of this disconnect on identifying the best approach to NOS instruction and on future science education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a bibliography for a seminar on evolution. Colleges and universities in the U.S. teach evolution as a seminar course. Since the field is broad, journals and other papers have appeared with discussions and other necessary data useful to students and instructors alike. Leading evolutionary biologists in America have been welcomed to participate with the recent papers. The contributors include Dean Amadon of he American Musesum of Natural History, George W. Beadle of the California, Alan A. Boyden of Rutgers University, Bayard H. Brattstrom of Adelphi College and others.

Abstract: Undergraduate research is a high impact educational practice that encourages more women to engage in science. Few studies have focused on gender concordance between mentors and mentees within the context of summer undergraduate research programs, and none have linked gender concordance with student gains. Previous research has more often overlooked the faculty–postgraduate–undergraduate triad, focusing instead on the faculty–undergrad dyad. This study explores the effects of gender concordance among mentoring dyads and triads on student gains from summer research experiences. Using programmatic and evaluation data, bivariate analyses were conducted and generalized estimating equations were employed to examine effects of gender concordance in mentoring relationships on student gains. Results indicate that gender concordance within undergraduate mentee and faculty mentor dyads promoted the greatest student gains among the six categories of mentoring relationships studied, having postgraduate mentors for undergraduates suppressed student gains, and women benefited more than men from gender concordance in mentoring relationships. Considering the results, undergraduate research program staff should make efforts to recruit more women faculty mentors, consider matching them with women undergraduates, train men scientists so they can be effective mentors for women students, and provide high‐quality mentoring training opportunities for postgraduate mentors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Many standards documents and learning progressions recommend evolution learning in elementary grades. Given young children's interest in dinosaurs and other fossils, fossil investigations can provide a rich entry into evolutionary biology for young learners. Educational psychology literature has addressed children's reasoning about foundational concepts related to fossils such as living/nonliving distinctions, causation, origins of objects, and conceptions of time. This exploratory qualitative case study explored preschool children's ideas about fossils and these foundational concepts as children moved through a 1‐week science camp devoted to fossils. Research participants consisted of 15 preschool children aged 3–6 enrolled in a university‐affiliated summer camp. Data sources included daily assessments and postcamp individual interviews. Data analysis yielded several main findings. Children were successful at determining where fossils could be found, identifying familiar fossils and fossil tracks, ascertaining that familiar and unfamiliar fossils were nonliving, and determining that rocks have natural origins. Children struggled more often at understanding how fossils differ from recent bones and skulls, properties uniting fossils, and the natural origins of plants and unfamiliar fossils. We also noted clear age‐ and object‐related trends for living/nonliving distinctions, teleological reasoning, origins, and object ages. Implications for future research and practice are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case study on the relationship between science teaching and socialization in the Junior High School in the U.S. The cased addressed issues related to what was taught and how it was taught as well as the social aspects of the classroom. The account followed standard naturalistic methodology. The first two parts of the paper contain a brief characterization of socialization and the substance of science teaching. The issues of socialization and control are manifested at various levels. Some of these concern instances in which students have violated institutional expectations. Most of the science teaching involved the use of activity sheets which represents a hands-on approach to the teachers and were the primary vehicle for teaching.

The article evaluates the use of graphic organizers in increasing achievement in middle school life sciences. The graphic organizers explained and used in the study presents information in an organized and structured manner with no expenditures other than paper, pencil and instructor time. Graphic organizers require minimal training time with teachers, little investment in materials, no investment in equipment and no change in the existing physical plant. The study was designed to extend the findings concerning the effectiveness of graphic organizers on student achievement. The purpose of the study was to determine the efficacy of graphic organizers in facilitating learning of above average students who were studying life science in the sixth and seventh grades.

The article focuses on the effect of using analogies on chemistry achievement in the U.S. This paper also determines whether the use of verbal analogies would have an effect on changing students' Piagetian levels during the school year. The results indicate that using mental analogies does not result in greater achievement for all types of students and appears to confirm the research reports of the three science teachers. The author implies that results might have been more positive in this study if students were required to extend the analogies themselves to the chemical situations rather than telling them how they applied.