Purpose: This article examines teachers' reflections during and after their participation in a teaching experiment focusing on how different teaching methods affect student learning in the social studies/civic education. Method: In the field experiment, classes and teachers were randomly assigned to a teaching syllabus based on the theoretical…

Take a selection of balls and marbles along to a nearby playground slide and let students investigate factors that may influence how balls accelerate down an inclined plane. Students can make hypotheses in small groups, plan investigations to test multiple possible explanations and draw conclusions about the importance of different variables. The…

Background: University physics students were engaged in open-ended thermodynamics laboratory activities with a focus on understanding a chosen phenomenon or the principle of laboratory apparatus, such as thermal radiation and a heat pump. Students had access to handheld infrared (IR) cameras for their investigations. Purpose: The purpose of the…

This paper examines the roles of multimodality and thematic patterns in the teaching of the particle model of matter. Although the particle model is a fundamental topic in science education, there is no consensus on (1) whether or not the model should be introduced in early grades and (2) how to introduce the model to students for the very first…

This study uses sociological perspectives to analyse one of the core practices in science education: school children's and students' laboratory work. Applying an ethnographic approach to the laboratory work done by pupils at a Swedish compulsory school, data were generated through observations, field notes, interviews, and a questionnaire. The…

In science education research, there is a growing body of studies focusing on the role of multiple representations in pupils' learning. This study is based on a social semiotic perspective and in the analysis, there is a special focus on how the content is conveyed and how relations are created through interaction between teachers/pupils and the…

How do we support the enthusiasm children show for biology in school? Unfortunately, lack of exciting practical work and boring biology lessons seem to make science less popular. As a senior lecturer in plant physiology at Karlstad University I have simplified experiments intended for students at university and then tested them on 10-11 year old…

Gives a history of traditional and audiolingual methods of language teaching. Reports on one Swedish and two U.S. long-term experiments. The two methods are found to be of about equal value. The most recent publications reveal a tendency to synthesize the two. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

THE CONSTRUCTION, REVISION, AND STANDARDIZATION OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIAL IN GERMAN IS DISCUSSED IN THIS REPORT AFTER CONSIDERATION IS GIVEN TO THE METHODS AND GOALS CONNECTED WITH THE PRODUCTION OF LANGUAGE MATERIAL. THE ROLE OF RESEARCHERS, AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS, TEACHERS, AND STUDENTS IN DEVELOPING COURSE MATERIAL IS OUTLINED. DESCRIPTIONS ARE…

This text describes a Swedish research program (GUME Project--the Swedish equivalent of the Gothenburg/Teaching/Methods/English Project) carried out during 1968-71 within the field of second-language instruction and learning. A number of comparative experiments were performed in order to assess the relative merits of two different approaches to…

We describe a case study of an in-service professional development project with four experienced biology teachers in two upper secondary schools. The objective was to better understand the role of laboratory work (labwork) in science education with a special emphasis on assessment. Research questions include the following: 1. What does the teacher…

This experiment continues the GUME experiments investigating methods for teaching English to Swedish school pupils. The aims of this particular study are twofold: (1) to analyze and classify the errors made by Swedish pupils in an oral English test in an effort to establish error patterns; and (2) to describe how the twelve most frequent errors in…

This study presents the procedures and results of an experiment conducted in Sweden to assess the relative effectiveness of two methods of teaching the grammatical structures of English as a foreign language to adults. The main objective of the study is to find indications as to which of the two theories (the audiolingual habit theory or the…