Presents a test designed to assess the "Understanding of the Nature of Scientific Enquiry" (UNSE) of Israeli students who studied the BSCS curriculum. Test results showed a 60 percent mastery level in knowledge of experimental methodology, indicating that the students had not mastered the type of tasks in the test. (MLH)

Results of this study indicate that science and social studies teachers have apparent attitude backgrounds that in many cases seem relatively strongly related to their subject matter backgrounds. Groups associated with science teachers were consistently more positive than those associated with social studies teachers. (Author/MA)

This study explores the acquisition of proportionality by investigating the relationship between an understanding of proportionality and the development of cognitive structure in the domain of mechanics. (Author/MA)

Secondary school students in a classification study spent more time in classifying plants in a seminatural environment than in classifying man-made geometrical objects in a classroom. No differences were found in these results with respect to race, sex, or age. (MLH)

Hypothesized that instructional methods employing concrete models and exemplars of a concept will lead to better student understanding at both the concrete and formal operational levels of cognitive development. However, concrete operational students did not profit from the instructional methods and results were not clear for early formal…

Explores the relationship of an individual's reliance or nonreliance upon concrete cues in problem solving and performance on a model-based measure of hierarchical classification. Level of cognitive development, as determined by performance on Piaget-type tasks, generally predicted hierarchical classification ability of junior- and senior-high…

Twenty-three high school biology students using the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) Blue Textbook were administered a weight conservation and two volume conservation tasks. A majority performed below formal-operational level, indicating that these students would be likely to encounter difficuluty with BSCS Blue Version materials. (MLH)

Identifies 20 out of 108 science misconceptions, selected by 30 percent or more of a sample of 1,444 high school and university students in Lebanon. (MLH)

High school students in South Australia were administered in group fashion the pendulum and the chemical color change developmental tasks. The major conclusion of this study is the fact that it is possible to translate into group form, administer, and assess rapidly and with considerable reliability Piagetian problem indicators of developmental…

Eighth-grade students who had been exposed to the Brandwein series "Concepts in Science" exhibited their perceptions of knowledge structures by free-sorting 39 science concept statements. A similarity index was used to measure sorting consistency and to compare individual sort patterns with a condensed Brandwein standard sort pattern.…

The purpose of this study was to identify a possible interaction between the cognitive style of the students and the instructional sequence of the materials and their combined effect on achievement. Findings indicate that interaction of cognitive style and instructional sequence is not significant in the ANCOVA. (Author/MA)

Compares student achievement and retention scores of secondary school chemistry students who were involved in: (1) learning-for-mastery, (2) personalized system of instruction and (3) control (independent study) modes of remediation work. Higher retention and more objectives were recorded by the learning-for-mastery group. (CP)

The following variables were correlated with attitudes toward science: school type, future specialization, curriculum, sex, achievement level, and cultural background. Only the curriculum variable did not correlate significantly. (MLH)

This commentary refers to a recent paper (1975) by Sayer and Ball in this journal concerning the relationships between formal operational thought and science achievement, and requests additional information on the representativeness of the sample and the performance of boys and girls on the Piagetian tasks. The requested information is provided.…

A sample of 108 eight-grade students using Intermediate Science Curriculum Study (ISCS) were tested with four Piagetian tasks: two tasks were related to ISCS concepts, two were not. Concludes that no students were formal operational, most were concrete operational, and most performed better on the non-ISCS related tasks. (MLH)