The education field favors innovations, but innovative schools tend to fade after an initial 'golden age.' According to the new institutional theory, this happens due to the innovative school's need to achieve institutional legitimacy, which encounters several difficulties. This study aims to explore the journey to attaining legitimacy in one…

Laboratory activities have long had a distinctive and central role in the science curriculum, and science educators have suggested that many benefits accrue from engaging students in science laboratory activities. Many research studies have been conducted to investigate the educational effectiveness of laboratory work in science education in…

Research in science and mathematics education has indicated that students often use inappropriate models for solving problems because they tend to mentally represent a problem according to surface features instead of referring to scientific concepts and features. The objective of the study reported in this paper was to determine whether 34 Israeli…

Study of problems experienced by ninth and eleventh grade Israeli students (n=1,645) indicated that younger adolescents were concerned with studies/career problems and with social "I"; older adolescents were concerned with existential issues and army/national service. Boys were concerned with existential issues, army/national service,…

Correlation of the Learning Environment Inventory with a semantic differential attitude test indicated that three learning environment variables (goal direction, satisfaction, and classroom organization) fostered positive attitudes toward chemistry. Course difficulty, interpersonal tension, and course speed were related to negative attitudes. (CP)

Investigated mediating effect of sex role typing on relationship between gender and work preferences among 192 male and 292 female eleventh graders. Results showed that sex role typing mediated the relationship between gender and preference for socially oriented work values. (TE)

Examines how maternal characteristics and work values are related to work values of adolescent children for 93 Israeli eleventh graders and their mothers. Results do not demonstrate that mothers' occupational characteristics affect the level of children's work values. Significant differences in work values are found for sons and daughters. (SLD)

This study examined development of three types of vocabulary knowledge (passive, controlled active, and free active) over one year of second-language instruction and the relationship of the three types at different stages of vocabulary learning. Subjects were 48 Israeli high school students of English as a Second Language. Results raise questions…

An investigation of biology matriculation tests in Israel was undertaken to assess the use of justifications with multiple-choice items and to compare the effect of three item formats on students' performance. More specifically, the study was designed to determine the: (1) extent to which justifications will differ if the correct answer is made…