Working from the view of schools as a system, and of school improvement as an ongoing journey (Hallinger & Heck, 2011; Jackson, 2000), this study investigated the perspectives of teacher leaders and principals from four metropolitan Catholic grade schools engaged in efforts to improve their school science programs. Built upon existing…

Principals can improve programs by becoming science advocates (to teachers, students, and parents), constructing and pushing a science curriculum plan, ensuring annual funds for science materials, providing needed inservice experiences, monitoring the program, and handling likely problems. A 73-item checklist is provided for evaluating current…

Describes a cooperative effort made to create a representative international network of centers for integrated science education and an instrument (given in the appendix) to describe integrated science education programs so they can become available to more users and adaptors. Some problems encountered in the instrument's development are…

This checklist is designed to help elementary school principals assess and improve science programs in their schools. The checklist is divided into four major sections, each dealing with an area that has an impact on these programs: (1) administrative aspects, considering the science curriculum plan, provisions for science in the budget,…