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This publication contains papers organized into four groupings: National and International Issues in Science Education; Teaching Strategies, Attitude and Enquiry Measures, and Surveys; Analyses of Curricula; and Research Techniques. (BR)

In a study of factors in the educational environment of the home, the school, and the peer group contributing to achievement and attitudes towards schooling at the upper primary and lower secondary school levels, an opportunity arose to examine the data available for configural and curvilinear relationships. Information was collected on 11 criterion measures, 8 of which were achievement and ability measures and the remainder were measures of attitudes. Information was obtained on many structural characteristics of the home. The technique used in testing for curvilinear relationships was to determine the relative contributions of the linear and quadratic terms of the structural variables to the prediction of the achievement and attitude test scores. Testing for interaction effects among a set of 15 measures was more complex. Two different approaches were adopted. One made use of an analytic procedure which employs a computer program known as the Automatic Interaction Detector. The other involved use of a special stepwise regression procedure. The evidence gathered from the analyses reported in this paper shows that there are a few strong non linear and interaction effects which confound the simple linear model being employed in the main analyses of the investigation. (Author/JM)

In this paper, personality characteristics of the students and their performance at school are linked together. The performance cycle model of 12 months duration used here contains causal relationships between initial achievement, the mediating variables of academic motivation and attentiveness, and final achievement. A random sample of 215 secondary school students in the schools in the Australian Capital Territory provided the study's data. In 1968 and early in 1969, data were gathered on the general ability and the achievement in mathematics and science of the students in the sample, and on their attitudes of self-regard, liking of school and shcool learning, and liking mathematics. During the school year in 1969, information was obtained on the attentiveness of the students in both mathematics and science classrooms. At the end of 1969, further data were collected on level of achievement in mathematics, and on academic motivation. The results of the path analyses for the science and mathematics performance loops were similar. In both analyses the contributions of the disturbance variables to academic motivation, attentiveness, final achievement, and final attitudes were large. (Author/JM)