Internet Use Habits of Students of the Department of Information Management, Hacettepe University, Ankara

The frequency and other characteristics of Internet use of students studying at the Department of Information Management at Hacettep University in Ankara, Turkey, are examined. According to the findings, students prefer electronic media to printed media, they find the easy accessibility of the information more important than the other qualities, and they regard search engines as the most important means of information retrieval.     

Children constructing their own knowledge

As this is the Centenary year of Piaget and Vygotsky I shall endeavour to develop this paper around their work, thereby maximising the overall conference theme. I shall examine the proposition namely that children construct their own knowledge.     

Progression in learning science

A national curriculum comprising statements of attainment at different levels must be underpinned by some idea of “progression” in learning. Questions arise as to the nature and meaning of progression. To gain a deeper insight into how children progress in their understanding of science, this research involves the construction and testing of a hypothetical learning sequence for the topic of forces. This interim report explains how children aged 7 to 13 are being interviewed to explore their explanations of phenomena involving forces. These explanations will be mapped onto the sequence to provide a multi-dimensional model of progression. Specializations: assessment, curriculum development. Specializations: assessment, investigations in science, progression in learning science.     

A review of teacher development reforms in Indonesian secondary science: The effectiveness of practical work in biology

Science teaching in Indonesia has undergone major reforms since independence. This paper examines the role of practical activities in secondary science from an international perspective and contrasts this with a developing country perspective. In examining major curriculum and teacher training reforms in Indonesia, continuing influences on science education from industrialised countries are acknowledged; however, nlike many other developing countries, Indonesia has essentially implemented curriculum and teacher training reforms using a pool of overseas trained senior teachers and locally trained personnel. A number of research studies on biology practical work in Indonesia suggest that practical activities in biology are more effective in enhancing student cognitive achievement, science process skills and problem solving abilities than traditional didactic classroom approaches.     

教师叙事:在实践中体悟生命

教师叙事,其实质是教师生命在实践中的体悟。它具有如下突出的特点:教师所叙之事是教师生命中真实的经历,是教师生命中独特的经历,是教师生命中有意义的经历。因此,“生命”是教师叙事的表现形式,也是教师叙事的核心特征。教师叙事也是教师实践的固化和凝结,课堂生活实践是教师叙事的源泉,课堂生活实践的反思是教师叙事的主题,追求课堂实践的自由境界是教师叙事的鹄的。由此,教师叙事便成为沟通教育理论与教育实践的桥梁。     

Open-ended investigations: Performance and effects of pre-training

Students' performance and the effects of pre-training were studied for tasks rated high in ambiguity, in particular those where the solution to the tasks cannot be arrived at through predictable algorithms. A total of 277 thirteen-year-old students from two urban schools in Singapore were randomly assigned to two groups. One group was provided with instruction for dealing with such tasks in general before performing a series of tasks, while the other group performed the tasks without the instruction. How well the students coped with the ambiguities of the tasks with and without pretraining is reported in this paper.