Discusses whether students can learn science from carefully designed online peer discussions. Contrasts two formats of contributed comments--historical debate and narrative text--and assesses the impact of an asynchronous discussion on student understanding of the nature of light. Reports that students gain integrated understanding of the nature…

Discusses whether and how computer programing courses can teach problem solving. Provides results of an integrated set of studies of middle school programing students whose problem solving skills increased in a programing class. Argues that "exemplary" instruction is more efficient than "typical" instruction. Examines the influence of students'…

Combines meta-analysis and process analysis to clarify the nature and magnitude of gender differences in cognitive, psychosocial, and physical tasks and their implications for mathematics and science careers. Findings indicate that learning and working environments should be redesigned to promote gender equality. (FMW)

Examines the implementation of Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE), which can incorporate modeling tools and hand-held devices. Describes WISE design team practices, features of the WISE learning environment, and patterns of feature use in WISE library projects. (SOE)

Encouraging students to be autonomous is an important goal of the Scaffolded Knowledge Integration (SKI) framework. Investigates learning and design questions. Indicates that prompting students to reflect significantly increases knowledge integration in science projects. Shows that self-monitoring prompts, which encourage planning for and…

Discusses research on middle school science learning and instruction that suggests how generative models of scientific phenomena can be developed. The Computer as Learning Partner curriculum is introduced as a curriculum that provides a firm foundation for lifelong learning through the use of authentic questions. (SLD)

Research offers important suggestions concerning science curriculum design, and real-time data collection technology offers great opportunities. This paper discusses how recent increases in understanding the nature of the learner and the process of instruction combined with recent advances in technology might lead to improved science instruction.…

The development and evaluation of a series of hypermedia tools designed to help students learn to program in PASCAL or LISP are described. Classroom trials with 171 college students illustrate use of the developed tools. The use of hypermedia to foster integrated understanding is discussed. (SLD)

Science educators face constant tradeoffs between allocating time to important topics and including more topics in the curriculum. We study 3,000 students experiencing 4 increasingly streamlined versions of a computer-enhanced middle school thermodynamics curriculum to investigate the impact of instructional time on knowledge integration.…

This document provides both a brief progress report for the Autonomous Classroom Computer Environments for Learning (ACCEL) project and an annotated bibliography of publications from this project, the Computers and Problem Solving Project, and other recent publications from the ACCCEL (Accessing the Cognitive Consequences of Computer Environments…

How students restructured their scientific ideas in response to contradictions was studied with 166 male and female students (aged 12 to 14 years) who tested their predictions about water displacement by experiment. Conceptual change varied; all subjects tended to hold onto old ideas, even when presented with conflicting information. (SLD)

This analysis of the relationship between science education and technology over the past 15 years focuses on lessons learned from research on learning and instruction, the relationship between the teacher and technology, and the influence of technological advances on educational practice. Five conclusions are drawn: (1) courseware authoring…

This document discusses the relation between adolescents' expertise (their informational background, which can be accurate or inaccurate, about a particular task or subject) and their formal operational reasoning, and reports the results of three studies of the effects of children's expertise on reasoning. In Study I, adolescents from a rural…

Groups of teachers and schools can bridge the theory-practice gap by using the Web-based Integrated Science Environment (WISE) project library. The WISE learning environment promotes lifelong learning along with language and technology literacy by making science accessible, thinking visible, and learning a cooperative experience. (Contains 16…

Examines how students use evidence, determines when they add further ideas and claims, and measures progress in understanding light propagation. Uses the Scaffolded Knowledge Integration (SKI) instructional framework for design decisions. Discusses design studies that test and elaborate on the instructional framework. (Contains 33 references.)…