The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a model-based introductory physics curriculum on conceptual learning in a Physics First (PF) Initiative. This is the first comparative study in physics education that applies the Rasch modeling approach to examine the effects of a model-based curriculum program combined with PF in the United…

Practical work is often considered to be a highlight of science classes for students. However, there are few opportunities for students to engage in an investigation which is situated in a real world problem and students are required to contribute their own ideas to the design and conduct of an experiment. This paper reports on a Scientists in…

During the 2009-10 school year, 42% of the students failed the biology segment of the EOCT, which affected not only the final grades of these students, but also overall school accountability. These results instigated some questions about the factors associated with students' success in biology; some of those factors related to the merit of single-…

The purpose of this within-group experimental study was to find out to what extent ninth-grade students improved their science performance beyond their middle school science performance at one Georgia high school utilizing a freshman academy model. Freshman academies have been recognized as a useful tool for increasing academic performance among…

The country's technological edge is receding, and the problem cannot be solved simply by flooding the workforce with more engineers and scientists. This comes as little surprise to administrators at the nation's community colleges. In 2007, the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Science, and the Institute of Medicine responded to…

This article provides an instructional approach to helping students generate open-inquiry research questions, which the authors call the "open-inquiry question template." This template was created based on their experience teaching high school science and preservice university methods courses. To help teachers implement this template, they…

To build on classroom experiments and lectures, Daniel Sweeney has his 9th grade earth science students act out scientific concepts on a 15-by-15-foot mat on the floor of the room. Object-tracking cameras mounted on scaffolding around the space collect data based on the students' movements while immersing them in the experience through a video…

Investigates the effectiveness of combining conceptual change text and concept mapping strategies on students' understanding of diffusion and osmosis. Results indicate that while the average percentage of students in the experimental group holding a scientifically correct view rose, the percentage of correct responses in the control group…

This teaching guide contains information, activities, and discussion questions and answers about oceans for grades nine and ten. The information section covers the following topics: studying global ocean color from space, what can be seen from space, phytoplankton, carbon dioxide, and the greenhouse effect of the earth. (MKR)

Each year, about 57 ninth graders cooperate with the managers of Mason Neck Wildlife Refuge, an eastern deciduous forest near the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in northern Virginia. Pursuing integrated studies in English, biology and technology, the students have inventoried a pond's biota, collected deer browse data, and…

Interviews 9th and 10th grade students (n=13) who studied an ecology unit and analyzed tape-recorded data for changes in organization of knowledge, represented by ideational networks and the development of higher cognitive operations. Provides insights into how students developed knowledge schemata, ideational networks, and the capacity to express…

Most comparative studies about China were challenged by many sinologists and educators for not grounding on representative samples. This research is mainly based on a Chinese data base collected from a random sample of more than 10,000 9th-grade students in the Second International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)…

A remedial instructional strategy (developed and implemented in ninth-grade physics classes) was found to significantly affect low/mixed ability students' achievement. The method was developed on the basis of a needs assessment of students' backgrounds and a detailed task analysis of the physics course's cognitive demands. (JN)

Describes the design of four science-performance tasks for grade 9 students and the relationship between their performance on those tasks and multiple-choice items on the Iowa Tests of Educational Development. The students and schools used to develop the tasks were not included in the verification sample. Contains 22 references. (Author/ASK)

The selection of elective science courses during high school is believed to act as a filter to future participation in science. This study investigated the research hypothesis that science self-efficacy and gender may be related to ninth grade student intentions to take elective science courses during high school. In this study, the Test of…