In Secondary Education, students need innovative skills and competences that the current education system does not sufficiently offer. Also, educators need pedagogical support to develop teaching to respond to 21st century skills requirements. In order to achieve these goals, an experimental culture of learning needs to be implemented in practice.…

We present a programme for a novel introductory lower-secondary chemistry course (seventh or eighth grade) that aims at the application of theories of science education, and in particular of conceptual/meaningful learning and of teaching methodology that encourages active and inquiry forms of learning The approach is rigorous with careful use of…

Through "preparing-to-teach," students at Fountain Valley School, Colorado Springs, felt that they learned material better and gained confidence and personal satisfaction. Their interest in teaching began with two unrelated projects--(1) an "older brother" project in which 11th- and 12th-grade boys tutored elementary students from predominantly…

Describes Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, modeled after the German Gymnasium.'' (DS)

Explores the use of analogies while teaching important concepts in secondary content classrooms containing students of diverse abilities. Measures included students' knowledge of concepts, the numbers and types of analogies teachers used, and teacher and student satisfaction. Results reveal that teacher use of the routine led to increased student…

Thirteen experiments and 15 activities are presented in this unit handbook for student use. The experiment sections are concerned with naked-eye observation in astronomy, regularity and time, variations in data, uniform motion, gravitational acceleration, Galileo's experiments, Netson's laws, inertial and gravitational mass, trajectories, and…

Discusses the problems, methodology, and positive results of an 8-week course in cultural literacy for 34 ninth grade students at Brooklyn's John Dewey High School. Provides sample materials in 4 appendixes. (NH)

Explains an experimental photographic technique starting with a realistic photograph. Using various media (oil painting, video/computer photography, and multiprint imagery) the artist changes the photograph's compositional elements. Outlines the phases of this evolutionary process. Illustrates four images created by the technique. (DB)

To determine the value of prepared lesson plans on instruction in vocational agriculture, 12 randomly selected Iowa high schools with approved vocational agriculture programs were randomly divided into two groups of six including a control group and a treatment group. Prepared lesson plans provided the only variance in instruction. Two meetings…

An experimental learning project directed toward bridging the gap experienced by students between high school and college, and serving as a model for a senior year social studies course, is described. The seminar utilized a cross-disciplinary, dialogue approach with emphasis on directly involving students in the thinking process. (JB)

A member of the original faculty of the experimental Ohio State University Laboratory High School reflects at a fiftieth reunion of the first graduating class. Students were used as guinea pigs to determine the effects of providing teenagers with liberating, interesting, and customized education from university faculty. (SM)

Though a general study of transformational grammar does not improve writing ability, students can learn to use transformational operations which combine and reduce clauses to make better sentences. Since students already know intuitively how to do the operations, transformational theory in the classroom is largely limited to sentence-combining…

To determine the effectiveness of an audio-tutorial technique in vocational agriculture, six treatment schools and six control schools were randomly selected from 48 Iowa high schools qualifying for participation in the study. While each school was provided the same reference material and teaching outline for the 14-day experimental period, the…

This study investigated (1) whether teaching applied linguistics can help high school students learn to write more effectively, and (2) which approach, linguistic or traditional, is more effective in teaching composition. Twelfth grade male students (188) in a private metropolitan high school were randomly assigned to six sample groups, fairly…