The first of two volumes dedicated to this little-explored topic, this volume gathers international perspectives to critically assess how Waldorf education has been perceived and discussed in both public and academic arenas. The book thereby challenges the historical concept of Waldorf education as an international movement championing…

Offering first-hand insights from the early originators of Cooperative Learning (CL), this volume documents the evolution of CL, illustrating its historical and contemporary research, and highlights the personal experiences which have helped inspire and ground this concept. Each of the chapters in "Pioneering Perspectives in Cooperative…

This paper is meant to highlight the occurrence of Simpson's Paradox when using aggregated data obtained from two IEA studies in Israel, while ignoring the effect of a powerful intervening variable in the local context--the ethnicity factor. It will demonstrate faulty conclusions regarding either the absence of relationships between a contextual…

A language assessment procedure was used with spontaneous spoken and written language samples of 13 orally trained children with hearing loss in integrated classrooms in two Israeli elementary schools. Results revealed significant differences between spoken and written language samples of these children in various correct syntactic structures,…

Teaching the Cell topic in junior high schools involves a host of problems. The study reported in this paper investigated the effect of various teaching methods on Israeli students' achievements, acquiring laboratory skills, and the dimensions of learning activities. The Cell topic was taught to an experimental group using the Jigsaw method and…

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)

Compared 2,500 13- and 17-year-old students in the United States with 350 13-year-old and 340 17-year-old students in Israel using test items from the 1976 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) efforts. The study was designed to examine the results of school science upon affective outcomes of instruction. (JN)

Experiences with an instructional strategy which enabled students to build for themselves the appropriate scientific concept for energy are described. This was done by pupil/teacher dialogue in small groups, in which students were expected to create for themselves a "generalization mechanism" based on their own frameworks. (KR)

This paper represents the initial stage of a project established to describe and understand the rationale and processes of certain educational systems in Israel and other countries, and to spread the acquired knowledge as a useful practical contribution. The problem in the study is to understand the conditions prevailing and the methods to be used…

Since the measurement of school achievement involves the administration of achievement tests to various grades on various subjects, both grade level and subject matter contribute to within-school achievement variations. To determine whether achievement test scores vary most among different fields within a grade level, or within fields among…

Discussed are the implications of the three main stages of conceptual change--"awareness, disequilibrium, and reformulating"--on misconceptions of grade 10 students in Israel. The difficulties and problems encountered with the procedure are included. (KR)

Although results of both formative and summative evaluation can be used for planning the next generation of a curriculum, a need exists for a third kind of evaluation, namely, Pre-Planning Evaluation (PPE). The purpose of PPE is to provide a database to curriculum development deliberations to assist in decision-making and to guard against neglect…

This study assesses factors that affect principals' roles in curricular innovation. A random sample of 69 Israeli principals participated in the study, which sought to estimate the predictive ability of policy, strategy, organizational, and background factors in explaining the variance of leadership styles. (TE)

Comparisons were made between teacher and pupil perceptions of eight facets of the mathematics environment. Teacher perceptions tended to differ from pupil perceptions although not always in the hypothesized direction. (Author/CW)

There is little doubt that the findings of research in science education can be depressing at times. The literature is replete with reports and research findings which highlight problems and shortcomings associated with the teaching and learning of science. In order to provide a refreshing alternative to the majority of research reports which…