RESEARCH REPORT

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between student understanding of the nature of science and their problem-solving strategies. Six hundred and twenty Year 8 students in Taiwan twice completed two conceptual problem-solving tests and a questionnaire on the nature of science. Four of these students were selected for follow-up interviews. The result of stepwise multiple regression indicated that the subscale on the nature of the scientific method consistently appeared as the best predictor for student problem-solving ability, explaining about 22% of the variance. It was also found that problem-solving strategies were more conceptually based for students that were high scorers on the nature of science survey.     

MEASURING THE CONFIDENCE OF 8TH GRADE TAIWANESE STUDENTS’ KNOWLEDGE OF ACIDS AND BASES

The present study investigated whether gender differences were present on the confidence judgments made by 8th grade Taiwanese students on the accuracy of their responses to acid–base test items. A total of 147 (76 male, 71 female) students provided item-specific confidence judgments during a test of their knowledge of acids and bases. Using the correctness of the answer responses, a confidence rating score, an unweighted rating score, and a relative confidence rating score were calculated for each respondent. The correlations between the boys and girls for each score area showed girls as scoring higher than boys in their knowledge of acids and bases, were more confident in this knowledge, and more willing to express different levels of confidence among the test items.     

An Exploration of Secondary Students’ Mental States When Learning About Acids and Bases

This study explored factors of students’ mental states, including emotion, intention, internal mental representation, and external mental representation, which can affect their learning performance. In evaluating students’ mental states during the science learning process and the relationship between mental states and learning achievement, valid, reliable, and scalable measures of students’ mental states and learning achievement are needed. This paper presents the development of the Mental State Conceptual Learning Inventory (MSCLI) to identify students’ mental states before and after learning about acids and bases. This instrument is time efficient and convenient and can be administered to large student samples so that teachers and researchers can gain profound insights into their students’ learning of acids and bases in science class. The results of this study indicate that students’ mental states are highly correlated with their achievement. As a whole, low-achieving students tended to have negative emotions and low intentions, were not good at internal visualization, and were unable to interpret graphics and draw pictures. In contrast, high-achieving students had positive emotions and intentions when learning life-related topics about acids and bases, and were good at internal visualization and drawing and interpreting graphics.     

Using Computers to Support a Beginning Teacher's Professional Development

This study explored the efficacy of promoting a beginning chemistry teacher's curriculum development and teaching practices through the use of computers. Using pictorial analogies, historical cases of science, and discrepant events in a web site designed by the researchers as curricular samples, the beginning teacher was asked to develop similar curriculum for his own teaching. After taking the researchers' advice into account and making adjustments, the beginning teacher implemented the curriculum in his classroom teaching and shared his experience with the researchers by e-mail communications. The teacher's teaching practices both before and after the web site treatment were observed and analyzed. It was found that before the treatment the teacher used the textbook as the only resource of his teaching. Extra curriculum was rarely seen, there were not many student-teacher interactions, and analogies or examples used in his explanation of abstract concepts were not preorganized. On the other hand, after the treatment, the teacher was able to develop suitable curricula by himself for the purpose of increasing student involvement. He also explained the applications of chemical concepts in daily lives and his analogies and demonstrations were well organized. Although the beginning teacher was able to develop curricula after the treatment, many aspects of his teaching can be improved, especially in the areas of student-teacher interaction and the implementation of students activities in science teaching.     

Taiwan Elementary Teachers’ Views of Science Teaching Self-Efficacy and Outcome Expectations

This paper presents the results of a case study involving 282 Taiwanese elementary science teachers at the elementary level. These teachers provided responses to the science efficacy instrument (STEBI-A) and also provided personal data regarding how their years of general (YTE) and science (YTS) teaching experience may have influenced student achievement in science. Researchers used two multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to investigate the interaction and influence of YTE and YTS upon the personal science teaching efficacy (PSTE) and science teaching outcome expectations (STOE) of these teachers. The results advocate the position that the years of general teaching experience of elementary science teachers in Taiwan have a significantly greater impact upon their personal science teaching efficacy and science teaching outcome expectations than years of teaching science. This evidence calls into question whether Bandura and Tschannen-Moran’s view of teacher efficacy as both context and subject matter specific at the elementary level can be applied to Taiwan elementary teachers who teach science. The results of this study should benefit educators and policy-makers with respect to future elementary teacher education throughout Taiwan and other developing nations. An erratum to this article can be found at