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Metaphors are used as a typical way to negotiate and to describe people's everyday experience. In the classroom, teachers commonly employ metaphors to engage students and to make abstract ideas appear more concrete. In particular, metaphors provide an effective means to help visualize abstract ideas. The study reported in this article describes and characterizes metaphors used by academic research scientists as they described their experiences with authentic scientific inquiry.

This study is part of ongoing research investigating the experiences of undergraduate students who enroll in an integrated inquiry-based biology program during their freshman year. The purpose of this study was to explore students' perspectives on the program and their perceptions of science and scientific inquiry after completing the program. Five students from the first cohort of students enrolled in the program were interviewed at the end of their second year and 17 students from the second cohort were interviewed at the beginning and end of their first year. Students were asked how the program differed from their other science courses, what they learned about science as a result of enrolling in the program, and how the program prepared them for future science courses and research. Qualitative methods were used to analyze the data and identify students' views. Analysis indicated that students had an overwhelmingly positive experience in the program, viewing it as a more effective way to learn science and an excellent preparation for future science endeavors. As a result of embarking on inquiry projects themselves, they had a greater understanding of the process of science and the type of work done by scientists. (Contains 2 figures.)

This article investigates three teachers' conceptions and use of inquiry-based instructional strategies throughout a professional development program. The professional development program consisted of a 2-week summer inquiry institute and research experience in university scientists' laboratories, as well as three academic year workshops. Insights gained from an in-depth study of these three secondary teachers resulted in a model of teacher conceptions that can be used to direct future inquiry professional development. Teachers' conceptions of inquiry teaching were established through intensive case-study research that incorporated extensive classroom observations and interviews. Through their participation in the professional development experience, the teachers gained a deeper understanding of how to implement inquiry practices in their classrooms. The teachers gained confidence and practice with inquiry methods through developing and presenting their institute-developed inquiry lessons, through observing other teachers' lessons, and participating as students in the workshop inquiry activities. Data analysis revealed that a set of four core conceptions guided the teachers' use of inquiry-based practices in their classrooms. The teachers' conceptions of science, their students, effective teaching practices, and the purpose of education influenced the type and amount of inquiry instruction performed in the high school classrooms. The research findings suggest that to be successful inquiry professional development must not only teach inquiry knowledge, but it must also assess and address teachers' core teaching conceptions. (Contains 1 figure. The following are appended: Pre-SRI Interview Protocol; and Post-SRI Interview Protocol.)

This paper examines the summer component of a year-long professional development program. The program was developed based on recent models of effective professional development that indicate that teachers should guide the direction and focus of the professional development program. Specific activities in the summer program were adapted from a long-running, successful program for university faculty development. In this study we explore the conceptions of inquiry teachers developed during the program, as well as the products teachers created. The discrepancies between program goals and the teachers' products and conceptions are described and reasons for these differences explored. The results suggest that engaging teachers in identifying key issues in their own professional development is an effective strategy.

This study examines the use of electronic networking technologies in the context of a secondary science methods course and an accompanying student teaching experience. Specifically, we examined the effects of social context on the student teaching reflections written by students randomly assigned to one of three different online settings: (a) a private journal, (b) an asynchronous discussion forum, and (c) a discussion forum within a web-supported community of teachers. The results indicate that these different online social contexts had effects on reflections themselves, as well as how the students perceived the assignment. Students in the private journal wrote better initial reflections than the other two groups; however, both of the discussion forum groups reflected on their teaching in their initial posts and in the responses that they wrote to other students. Furthermore, only the students using the discussion forum within the web-supported community of preservice and inservice teachers found both the assignment and reflection in and of itself to be of value. This study has implications with regards to how one can structure online interactions for preservice teachers in a way that will encourage meaningful reflection and collaboration. (Contains 4 tables.)

Teachers can easily identify what subjects their students have trouble with, whether it is transcription and translation, glycolysis and fermentation, balancing chemical equations, or vector analysis of forces acting on an object. Yet, no matter how teachers try to make these complex issues more accessible to students, or how new editions of textbooks provide improved graphics and more lucid descriptions, students still find these topics troublesome. This article describes a method by which teachers can analyze and find solutions for these kinds of "student-learning bottlenecks," and at the same time incorporate more inquiry into the classroom. The method is based on a summer professional development workshop called the Summer Research Institute (SRI) at Indiana University (IU) in which teachers collaborate with their colleagues to remedy learning bottlenecks that they have identified in their courses. (Contains 1 figure.)

This paper describes our use of the ADDIE protocol to design and develop an interactive tutorial for students learning molecular symmetry operations and point groups. The tutorial provides a 3-D environment where students can examine molecules, structures, and symmetry elements. Most such tutorials are connected to courses or instructors in ways that make them difficult for others to use. Our goal was to create a freely available tutorial that would be independent of course, textbook, or instructor but would scaffold student learning of these abstract concepts. A usability study was also conducted in order to assist the designers in creating or improving key features of the tutorial and to determine whether the tutorial would be viewed as valuable to students. We found that students appreciated the features, especially mouse-overs and applets that afforded the opportunity to freely rotate accurate images of molecules.

There has been renewed discussion of the scientific method, with many voices arguing that it presents a very limited or even wholly incorrect image of the way science is really done. At the same time, the idea of a scientific method is pervasive. This article identifies the scientific method as a simple model for the process of scientific inquiry. A more sophisticated model is briefly described and then used to analyze an inquiry-based exercise. The use of such new and empirically based models for the scientific inquiry process may assist instructors and developers of science learning materials. (Contains 2 figures.)

Describes the design of a Common Molecules collection that provides interactive tools for 3-D visualization of molecules. The organizational design provides not only structural information, but also historical and/or key information on the properties of the molecules in the collection. Describes student use of the collection and the role of students in the development of the collection. (Author/SOE)

Describes challenges as a web-supported professional development system is integrated into elementary science methods courses. Discusses the difficulties encountered while attempting to develop and sustain effective inquiry-based teaching. Recommends the implementation of a web-based professional development system into elementary methods science courses and describes successful strategies for fostering a collaborative atmosphere between teacher educators, preservice teachers, and in-service teachers. (Author/KHR)

Interrogating received knowledge is constitutive to any critical project, and recently there has been a wave of scholarship which argues for locating the origin of racist-thinking prior to modern Europe—even prior to the Common Era—without any real consideration of the potential dangers accompanying such a seismic redefinition. By expanding "racism" to include potentially any pre-modern xenophobic or ethnicist atrocity, even well-meaning scholarship dilutes the peculiar injustice of modern Europe's most successful epistemological weapon. As a result, we lose any criteria to distinguish ubiquitous oppressive projects from specifically racist-projects of hegemony and domination. However laudable its intent, such scholarship falls prey to methodological, epistemological, and practical errors that hamstring the ameliorative impact of contemporary anti-racist work while ironically diminishing racism's impact. For if every conflict is racist, then contemporary colorblindness is correct: if white supremacy isn't particularly white, then racism is a distinction without a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the effects of an integrated video media curriculum enhancement on students' achievement and attitudes in a high school chemistry course. Findings reveal significantly higher achievement scores for students who experienced the course enhanced with integrated video media. Students with high levels of logical thinking ability benefited most from the video-enhanced curriculum. Contains 22 references. (Author/JRH)

Although the commentary on Aristotle's problematic discussion of slavery is vast, his discussion of nobility receives little attention. The fragments of his dialogue On Noble Birth constitute his most extensive examination of nobility, and while their similarity to the παμβασιλεύς of the Politics has recently been recognized, their relevance to natural slavery has hitherto gone unnoticed. Yet by declaring that true nobles - particularly the god-like ἀρχηγός - preternaturally possess superhuman characteristics, Aristotle precludes their easy inclusion in the kind "human" in a manner inversely mirroring the preternatural subhumanity of natural slaves. Building on recent scholarship which argues that Aristotle's "defense" of natural slaves is better understood as an indictment, On Noble Birth becomes most coherent if read as a hypothetical investigation into what would be required for "nobility" to name something true rather than equivocal, with the conclusion that "true nobility" is an empty set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Harwood, Ph.D., M.Litt. (Cambridge), lives in Red Deer, Alberta. He is the author of Mythology's Last Gods, Prometheus Books, 1992. Editor's Preface: A century of scholarship on the Old [...]

A review of A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love, Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 271 pages. $24.00 hardcover. ISBN 0-618-33540-4 'WHAT A BOOK A DEVIL'S Chaplain [...]

The 18th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education (BCCE) will be held in Iowa for sharing teaching and research ideas. The lists of workshops, exhibits, plenary speakers and social events are described.

Although there is much discussion in scientific and law journals regarding direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTCGT), there is a paucity of philosophical-ethical examination of how such services threaten to repeat the essentialist, racial-projects of the past. On the one hand, testing for ancestry can be cathartic: for those lacking familial history as to when and how they came to be where they are, DTCGT can offer powerful access to their lineage and identity-formation. On the other hand, DTCGT inevitably reinscribes problematic epistemologies of race—even when the companies claim that their tests can be tools to combat white supremacy. Tracing the roots of biological essentialism back to Aristotle, through the invention of raza as cocreator of modernity, and up to critical race theories today, provides a strong foundation to examine the nascent race-thinking underlying DTCGT. Borrowing heavily from Paul Taylor and Charles Mills, but also enlisting scholars from other disciplines, such as Ifeoma Ajunwa (law), Alondra Nelson (sociology), and Troy Duster (genetics), provides the broad scope necessary for thoughtful, agile engagement of that which is ameliorative, unethical, and even dangerous—for all of us—in the age of 23andMe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]