Effects of thematic‐based,hands‐on science teaching versus a textbook approach for students with disabilities

Institutions of higher education, states, and local K–12 districts have been challenged to improve math and science education for our nation's students. In the past few years, there has been renewed interest in inquiry‐based, activity‐oriented instruction in science for students with disabilities. Yet, there still exists the need for further empirical evidence to support instructional improvements for students with more involved emotional and behavioral disabilities. This study describes a program in which 18 middle school students with serious emotional disturbances were instructed, over the course of 8 weeks, on “Matter” by two different instructional approaches. Students in one classroom received a traditional textbook approach to science content, whereas students in another classroom received science instruction by a hands‐on, thematic approach. Over the course of instruction, data were collected regarding students' behavior and achievement. Results indicate that, overall, students in the hands‐on instructional program performed significantly better than the students in the textbook program on two of three measures of science achievement, a hands‐on assessment and a short‐answer test. The students did not differ on a multiple‐choice format test. With regard to behavior, there were no significant differences in behavioral problems found between the two groups of students over the course of the study. Findings are discussed in relation to instructional implications for students with disabilities in the science classroom. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 245–263, 2005     

教科书制度的比较研究与改革对策

教科书是教学活动的重要依据,在教育系统中处于核心地位。教科书制度对于规范教科书市场、提高教科书质量起着十分重要的作用。考察一个国家的教科书制度要把它放在政治、经济、文化的大背景下研究。我国正处在经济体制转型时期,在市场经济条件下教科书管理模式也要进行相应的改革。对一些典型国家的中小学教科书制度进行了比较研究,同时对在市场经济条件下如何建立与我国国情相适应的教科书管理制度提出了相关的对策和建议。     

香港科学教材中探究活动的特点分析

科学课程强调科学探究,探究活动作为科学探究的载体,它的设计的好坏将直接影响科学探究的程度和科学教育的效果。香港初中科学教材的探究活动颇具特色,文章从心理学、教学目标和学生的发展特点等方面对其中的特点进行分析,为我国科学教材的编写和修改提供借鉴。     

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.     

Standardized test outcomes for students engaged in inquiry‐based science curricula in the context of urban reform

Considerable effort has been made over the past decade to address the needs of learners in large urban districts through scaleable reform initiatives. We examine the effects of a multifaceted scaling reform that focuses on supporting standards based science teaching in urban middle schools. The effort was one component of a systemic reform effort in the Detroit Public Schools, and was centered on highly specified and developed project‐based inquiry science units supported by aligned professional development and learning technologies. Two cohorts of 7th and 8th graders that participated in the project units are compared with the remainder of the district population, using results from the high‐stakes state standardized test in science. Both the initial and scaled up cohorts show increases in science content understanding and process skills over their peers, and significantly higher pass rates on the statewide test. The relative gains occur up to a year and a half after participation in the curriculum, and show little attenuation with in the second cohort when scaling occurred and the number of teachers involved increased. The effect of participation in units at different grade levels is independent and cumulative, with higher levels of participation associated with similarly higher achievement scores. Examination of results by gender reveals that the curriculum effort succeeds in reducing the gender gap in achievement experienced by urban African‐American boys. These findings demonstrate that standards‐based, inquiry science curriculum can lead to standardized achievement test gains in historically underserved urban students, when the curriculum is highly specified, developed, and aligned with professional development and administrative support. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 922–939, 2008     

A comparative study of GCE and international curricula in Singapore and Australia

This paper is a comparative analysis of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools, an international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia, focusing on the implementation of GCE practices through the adoption of international education models - the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) and the International Baccalaureate Programme (IB) respectively, to create hybrid curricula. The research findings indicate that the curriculum and resources, school culture, school leaders’ and teachers’ values, as well as the utilisation of human and financial resources all influence how the schools engage with GCE in their quest towards internationalisation. A key overarching finding of the research relates to the tensions between critical democratic and educational domains and neo-liberal market rationales, which had significantly affected the schools’ decisions in curricula and GCE enactment within both schools. Despite their commitment to GCE ideals, both schools were equally mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their educational markets.     

Technology‐rich inquiry science in urban classrooms: What are the barriers to inquiry pedagogy?*

What are the barriers to technology‐rich inquiry pedagogy in urban science classrooms, and what kinds of programs and support structures allow these barriers to be overcome? Research on the pedagogical practices within urban classrooms suggests that as a result of many constraints, many urban teachers' practices emphasize directive, controlling teaching, that is, the “pedagogy of poverty” (Haberman, 1991 ), rather than the facilitation of students' ownership and control over their learning, as advocated in inquiry science. On balance, research programs that advocate standards‐based or inquiry teaching pedagogies demonstrate strong learning outcomes by urban students. This study tracked classroom research on a technology‐rich inquiry weather program with six urban science teachers. The teachers implemented this program in coordination with a district‐wide middle school science reform. Results indicated that despite many challenges in the first year of implementation, students in all 19 classrooms of this program demonstrated significant content and inquiry gains. In addition, case study data comprised of twice‐weekly classroom observations and interviews with the six teachers suggest support structures that were both conducive and challenging to inquiry pedagogy. Our work has extended previous studies on urban science pedagogy and practices as it has begun to articulate what role the technological component plays either in contributing to the challenges we experienced or in helping urban science classrooms to realize inquiry science and other positive learning values. Although these data outline results after only the first year of systemic reform, we suggest that they begin to build evidence for the role of technology‐rich inquiry programs in combating the pedagogy of poverty in urban science classrooms. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 128‐150, 2002     

A quantitative and qualitative inquiry into the attitudes toward science of nonscience college students

The attitudes toward science of nonscience college students were investigated using quantitative and qualitative forms of inquiry. Quantitative methods were used to determine (a) how attitudes toward science of nonscience college students compare with attitudes of science majors, and (b) whether attitudes toward science change with instruction. Qualitative assessment was used to investigate attitude development as it relates to science. The subjects were 102 nonscience students and 81 science students. Six attitudinal variables were investigated using the Attitudes Toward Science Inventory (ATSI) as the quantitative instrument. Hotelling's T² showed a significant difference (p = 0.0001) in attitudes between the two groups. T tests revealed significant differences between the two groups for all six variables. A significant difference (p = 0.0001) was found between pretest and posttest results for the nonscience students. T tests showed significant differences between the two sets of scores for all six variables, indicating a favorable change in attitudes. An interview questionnaire was used to investigate factors contributing to attitude development. The interview results suggested that attitudes toward science are formed by interactions of both school and nonschool variables.     

Argumentative abilities in metacognition and in metalinguistics: a study on university students

The article presents a study on metalinguistic, cognitive and metacognitive abilities in university students. A sample of 353 students was recruited; 178 of which from scientific and 175 from humanistic Faculties, with gender balance (M = 178; F = 175) whose age range was between 20 and 25 years old. They were administered a metalinguistic ability test that assesses metalinguistic awareness at implicit and explicit levels (L and ML scores) and the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices 38 (SPM38). In addition to the usual nonverbal administration of the matrices, candidates were asked to justify in written form the reasons for the solution indicated in each item. Three scores were considered for the SPM38: the ordinary score based on the number of correct nonverbal solutions (O.S.), a 7-point scale for assessing the argumentation of the correct solutions (C.ARG.S.) and a 6-point scale for assessing the argumentation of the incorrect solutions (I.ARG.S.). Significant gender and curriculum effects were found, with males and scientific students dominating at the nonverbal level while females and humanistic students dominated in the argumentative abilities related to the matrices and in all the scores of the metalinguistic test. A number of significant correlations were found between all the metalinguistic, cognitive and metacognitive abilities considered, with a prominent role of the metalinguistic abilities at the explicit level (ML score) that show a clear argumentative structure very similar to the C.ARG.S. argumentations in the matrices test.     

Influence of explicit and reflective versus implicit inquiry‐oriented instruction on sixth graders' views of nature of science

This study investigated the influence of an explicit and reflective inquiry‐oriented compared with an implicit inquiry‐oriented instructional approach on sixth graders' understandings of nature of science (NOS). The study emphasized the tentative, empirical, inferential, and imaginative and creative NOS. Participants were 62 sixth‐grade students in two intact groups. The intervention or explicit group was engaged in inquiry activities followed by reflective discussions of the target NOS aspects. The comparison or implicit group was engaged in the same inquiry activities. However, these latter activities included no explicit references to or discussion of any NOS aspects. Engagement time was balanced for both groups. An open‐ended questionnaire in conjunction with semistructured interviews was used to assess participants' NOS views before and at the conclusion of the intervention, which spanned 2.5 months. Before the intervention, the majority of participants in both groups held naive views of the target NOS aspects. The views of the implicit group participants were not different at the conclusion of the study. By comparison, substantially more participants in the explicit group articulated more informed views of one or more of the target NOS aspects. Thus, an explicit and reflective inquiry‐oriented approach was more effective than an implicit inquiry‐oriented approach in promoting participants' NOS conceptions. These results do not support the intuitively appealing assumption that students would automatically learn about NOS through engagement in science‐based inquiry activities. Developing informed conceptions of NOS is a cognitive instructional outcome that requires an explicit and reflective instructional approach. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 551–578, 2002     

Selective attentional effects of textbook study questions on student learning in science

A selective attentional model used to explain recent mathemagenic and related research findings also predicted that textbook study questions adjunct to a flow diagram focus students' attention more upon questioned information and less upon nonquestioned information. Furthermore, the chances of such dysfunctional selective attention are increased when students are provided with a mere sampling (partial set) of study questions covering only portions of the diagram and are decreased when students are provided with a population (complete set) of questions or a no-question treatment. As predicted, using the Newman-Keuls procedure (p <0.05), the population and no-question treatment groups outperformed the sampling-question group which, in turn, outperformed a placebo-control group. It was concluded that researchers and teachers should be aware that encouraging students to concentrate on selective portions of critical information can result in inadequate processing of such specialized science materials as flow diagrams.