This book provides a retrospective account of the processes of curriculum development and evaluation of the Australian Science Education Project (ASEP), a venture which pioneered large-scale State-Commonwealth cooperation in education in Australia. The processes are described to identify practices for future curriculum initiatives. Important…

Relationships between socioeconomic status and proficiency at enquiry skills important in science education are explored. The relationships are found to be sufficiently strong to cause concern among science teachers. It is noted enquiry skills can be taught and suggests that teachers do so for pupils with low proficiency. (MP)

Reports on findings from an interpretive team study of the teaching/learning environments in the science program at an innovative Australian high school, in which 778 students perform laboratory and classroom activities within a self-paced, independent framework. Suggests that the knowledge that teachers require to undertake effective science…

During 1974, materials developed by the Australian Science Education Projects (ASEP) became available in final published form. The publication of these materials was an especially important undertaking since ASEP was the first national curriculum project, in any subject area, to be developed in Australia. This report presents research into four…

Describes the development of the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) instrument for assessing perceptions of the psychosocial environment in science laboratory classrooms, and reports validation information for samples of senior high school students from six different countries. The SLEI assesses five dimensions of the actual and…

Ten Australian seventh-grade classes using Australian Science Education Project (ASEP) materials and ten control classes were administered the Science Class Inventory to determine classroom climate. results showed that the ASEP students underwent more favorable changes in their enjoyment of science classes. (MLH)

Reports on the adaptation of a scale previously used to measure attitude toward the social implications of science among college students for use with secondary students. Upon use with seventh graders, scores obtained on the social implications scale correlated significantly with pupil socioeconomic status and with a number of learning environment…

Examined were sex differences and the role of socioeconomic status in science achievement in Western Australian coeducational and single-sex schools. The influence of independent schools, both single-sex and coeducational, was found to be a factor that improved student science achievement for both boys and girls. (CW)

Determined reliability/usefulness of a simple anxiety measure administered to 2,068 grade eight and nine students. Also found relationships between anxiety and such classroom characteristics as participation, teacher support, and competition. Suggests use of the measure in guiding teachers to change classrooms to reduce student anxiety. (JN)

Relationships between levels of classroom individualization (personalization, participation, independence, investigation, and differentiation) and seven science-related attitudes of junior high school students (N=712) were examined. The study also provided support for the reliability and validity of the two instruments used and for their general…

Explores associations between students' (n=1,592) perceptions of their chemistry laboratory classroom environment and their attitudes towards chemistry. Findings indicate significant associations between the nature of the chemistry laboratory classroom environment and the students' attitudinal outcome. "Integration" and "rule…

Describes some of the conceptual, measurement, and methodological problems associated with evaluating science curricula in terms of their impact on students' content-free cognitive outcomes. A study of the effects of including ASEP (Australian Science Education Project) materials into a seventh-grade program revealed several significant…

Reports an investigation into the relationship between student attitudes and teacher characteristics. Instructional and student variables are reported as insignificant predictors of changes in attitudes. Significant relationships exist between attitude outcome change and one of the teacher, instruction-student or instruction-teacher variables.…

Provides an overview of the evaluation studies conducted on the Australian Science Education Project (ASEP). Six evaluation foci are used: (1) Curriculum development process; (2) Philosophy; (3) Materials; (4) Learning Environment; (5) Student Outcomes and; (6) Dissemination. (HM)

Compares 1,547 aims of science education culled from the literature to the 33 aims of the Australian Science Education Project (ASEP). Places aims into 11 categories, then calculates proportion of total aims fafalling into each category. Rank correlation of literature aims and ASEP aims was 0.90. (MLH)