The effect of a strategy training on reading comprehension in fourth-grade students

Previous studies have shown that instruction of reading strategies is an effective method for enhancing reading comprehension. However, many of the interventions in these studies focused on small groups of (poor) comprehenders and were provided by research assistants, making it time-consuming and relatively expensive. The authors implemented a strategy intervention to intact classrooms, consisting of reciprocal teaching and delivered by teachers. Participants were 510 typically developing fourth-grade students. A clustered randomized controlled trial was conducted with pretest, posttest, and follow-up measures to assess knowledge of reading strategies and reading comprehension. The results revealed that the intervention had an effect on knowledge of reading strategies at posttest and follow-up. However, the intervention did not affect reading comprehension performance. Together with the results of earlier studies, the present study raises the question whether strategy interventions are the most efficient to improve fourth-grade students' reading comprehension.     

The development of science process skills in authentic contexts

Instructional strategies and curriculum sequences aimed at teaching process skills have received considerable attention in science education. On the other hand, the teaching of domain-independent, context-free skills has been subject to criticism on the ground that important aspects of cognitive activities are functions of meaningful contexts. The intent of this study was to examine the development of integrated process skills in the context of open-inquiry laboratory sessions. The data-collection approach was qualitative and included videotapes of laboratory sessions, laboratory reports of students, and the reflective journals kept by the two teachers involved in the study. Forty-eight students from the Grade 11 introductory physics course, 29 students from the Grade 12 physics course, and 60 students from the Grade 8 general science course from an all-boys private school participated in the study. An interpretive research methodology was adopted for construction of meaning from the data. Students worked in collaborative groups during all of the open-inquiry laboratory sessions. Findings from the study indicate that students develop higher-order process skills through nontraditional laboratory experiences that provided the students with freedom to perform experiments of personal relevance in authentic contexts. Students learned to (a) identify and define pertinent variables, (b) interpret, transform, and analyze data, (c) plan and design an experiment, and (d) formulate hypotheses. Findings of this study suggest that process skills need not be taught separately. Integrated process skills develop gradually and reach a high level of sophistication when experiments are performed in meaningful context.     

以形成性评价促进学生发展

在"项目教学,任务引领"的教学理念下,利用有效的形成性评价方式可以提高学生的学习动力和效果,为学生今后的可持续发展提供良好的条件。     

Graduate Experience in Science Education: the development of a science education course for biomedical science graduate students

The University of Rochester's Graduate Experience in Science Education (GESE) course familiarizes biomedical science graduate students interested in pursuing academic career tracks with a fundamental understanding of some of the theory, principles, and concepts of science education. This one-semester elective course provides graduate students with practical teaching and communication skills to help them better relate science content to, and increase their confidence in, their own teaching abilities. The 2-h weekly sessions include an introduction to cognitive hierarchies, learning styles, and multiple intelligences; modeling and coaching some practical aspects of science education pedagogy; lesson-planning skills; an introduction to instructional methods such as case studies and problem-based learning; and use of computer-based instructional technologies. It is hoped that the early development of knowledge and skills about teaching and learning will encourage graduate students to continue their growth as educators throughout their careers. This article summarizes the GESE course and presents evidence on the effectiveness of this course in providing graduate students with information about teaching and learning that they will use throughout their careers.     

The relationship between science process abilities of teachers and science achievement of students: An experimental study

The objective of this experimental study is to investigate the relationships among science teacher characteristics and student outcomes. The selected characteristics of teachers are their understanding of science processes and their ability to control variables, and the outcomes of students are the achievement in science contents and processes. The results support the hypothesized relationships and show that the teacher ability to control variables is a more valuable characteristic than the understanding of science processes for student achievement. Conclusions are drawn about the implications for the education of science teachers.     

理工科女大学生心理健康发展探析

本文就理工科女大学生在学业、人际交往和就业等方面的问题进行探讨,以期在今后的学生思想政治教育工作中加大对理工科女大学生心理健康发展的重视,引导她们树立科学的健康发展观,能够在各方面适应社会的发展需要。     

Cognitive foundations for science assessment design: Knowing what students know about evolution

To improve assessments of academic achievement, test developers have been urged to use an “assessment triangle” that starts with research‐based models of cognition and learning [NRC (2001) Knowing what students know: The science and design of educational assessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press]. This approach has been successful in designing high‐quality reading and math assessments, but less progress has been made for assessments in content‐rich sciences such as biology. To rectify this situation, we applied the “assessment triangle” to design and evaluate new items for an instrument (ACORNS, Assessing Contextual Reasoning about Natural Selection) that had been proposed to assess students' use of natural selection to explain evolutionary change. Design and scoring of items was explicitly guided by a cognitive model that reflected four psychological principles: with development of expertise, (1) core concepts facilitate long‐term recall, (2) causally‐central features become weighted more strongly in explaining phenomena, (3) normative ideas co‐exist but increasingly outcompete naive ideas in reasoning, and (4) knowledge becomes more abstract and less specific to the learning situation. We conducted an evaluation study with 320 students to examine whether scores from our new ACORNS items could detect gradations of expertise, provide insight into thinking about evolutionary change, and predict teachers' assessments of student achievement. Findings were consistent with our cognitive model, and ACORNS was revealing about undergraduates' thinking about evolutionary change. Results indicated that (1) causally‐central concepts of evolution by natural selection typically co‐existed and competed with the presence of naïve ideas in all students' explanations, with naïve ideas being especially prevalent in low‐performers' explanations; (2) causally‐central concepts were elicited most frequently when students were asked to explain evolution of animals and familiar plants, with influence of superficial features being strongest for low‐performers; and (3) ACORNS scores accurately predicted students' later achievement in a college‐level evolution course. Together, findings illustrate usefulness of cognitive models in designing instruments intended to capture students' developing expertise. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 744–777, 2012     

The relationship between measures of vocabulary and narrative writing quality in second- and fourth-grade students

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between measures of written vocabulary and writing quality. Participants included 92 second-grade students and 101 fourth-grade students. Students completed two writing samples: one an experimenter-developed writing task and the other, a standardized assessment of writing quality. Research questions examined whether four vocabulary measures (vocabulary diversity, less frequent vocabulary, mean syllable length, number of polysyllabic words) demonstrated developmental differences, whether the vocabulary measures remained stable across two different writing prompts, and whether the vocabulary measures explained unique and shared variance beyond that explained by compositional length and compositional spelling. The results indicated that vocabulary diversity and less frequent vocabulary showed developmental differences across the two writing tasks. Vocabulary diversity was the only variable to remain stable across the two writing tasks. Commonality analysis revealed that vocabulary measures explained unique and shared variance in writing quality in all four models (2 grades and 2 writing prompts). Generally, vocabulary diversity was the most stable and consistent of the four vocabulary variables.     

The influence of classroom climate on science process and content achievement of community college students

The effect of two specific classroom climates on learning of science process skills and content achievement in college level science classes was studied. Two classroom climates were established and designated as discovery classroom climate (DCC) and nondiscovery classroom climate (NDCC). The term discovery denotes the degree of freedom the teacher established in classroom interactions, both verbal and nonverbal. Verbal interactions were monitored with the Science Laboratory Interaction Categories. These data indicate that students in the two classroom climates achieved equally as well on learning of biological content of the course, but students in the discovery classroom climate achieved significantly higher scores in science process skills as measured by the Welch Science Process Inventory. This study, conducted in a large, suburban community college, offers some useful information to the person who has educational goals beyond, but including, the learning of science information and concepts, and possibly science process. Students in the less directive discovery climate learned as much content as those in a more directive comparison class-they lost nothing of what is traditionally sought in a college science class. In addition, the discovery climate facilitated the development of science process skills which were significantly better than the comparison class. A five-week intensive class using the discovery climate was found to provide as much content acquisition as the ten-week nondiscovery climate.     

Environment in the science curriculum: The politics of change in the Pan-Canadian science curriculum development process

This paper draws on the experience of the Pan-Canadian science curriculum development process as an instance of the more general problem of integrating science and environmental education. It problematizes the issue of incorporation of social and environmental dimensions within the science curriculum in terms of both policy and practice. The agenda of environmental education, as eco-philosophical and eco-political, provides a radically different base from which to explore the impact of change on science teachers and schools. Thus, the very idea of environmental education as an educational policy goal must be examined in light of conflicting agendas of science and environmental education. This paper argues that transforming structures and processes of school science to enable different teacher and student roles involves closing the gap between curriculum (policy) development and professional development as well as reconceptualizing science education, but from more overtly open moral value and political perspectives than have been considered in the literature of science education.     

The development of a recycling awareness scale for prospective science teachers

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale for measuring prospective science teachers’ awareness of waste recycling. The study was conducted with the participation of 382 prospective teachers attending a university located in northern Turkey. The five-point Likert type scale that was developed contained 82 items relating to prospective science teachers’ awareness of waste recycling. The factor analysis conducted showed that five items had factor loadings below 0.30, and five were cross loading items. Factor analysis was repeated after removing these items. A further 24 items were removed from the list at the end of the factor analysis, and the remaining 48 items were grouped under ten dimensions. The reliability coefficient for the factors extracted varied between 0.717 and 0.805, and the internal reliability coefficient for the whole scale was 0.905.     

Examining the impacts of the structures writing intervention for teaching fourth-grade students to write informational text

Reading and Writing - Expository writing may be especially difficult for elementary grade students due to lack of background knowledge and unfamiliar text structures. A text structure writing...     

初中学生综合科学过程技能的水平、特点及影响因素

以1452名初中生为被试,以Burns等编制的综合过程技能测验(TIPS)和Hasan的科学教师的影响问卷,科学教科书的影响问卷,以及学生科学学习的自我效能感问卷为工具,考察初中学生的综合过程技能水平及其特点。结果表明,初中生的平均技能水平较高,但还不能达到满意水平,同时存在性别、年级和城乡的显著差异,表现为:随着年级的递增,初中生的TIPS成绩也递增;城市学校的学生成绩显著高于农村学校;在控制和操作变量技能上,男生得分显著低于女生;教师、教材、自我效能与综合过程技能显著相关,其中教材对综合过程技能的影响最大。