This 21st Century Skills Map is the result of hundreds of hours of research, development and feedback from educators and business leaders across the nation. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has issued this map for the core subject of Science.

Most high school chemistry curricula contain a unit on gas volume and a unit on the particulate nature of matter. The existence and persistence of adolescent preconceptions about the material nature of gases is an important factor to be considered in the teaching of principles or theories related to gases. The purpose of the study reported in this…

Vygotsky argued that children's development is most likely to occur when, in the course of collaboration, assistance is provided within their zone of proximal development--the distance between what a child can achieve independently and what he or she can do with the assistance of a more competent member of their culture. This paper reports the…

Describes the use of a TV program to review regularly assigned homework in a chemistry class designed for students with a weak chemistry and/or math background. Presents student reactions, conclusions, and future plans for the TV sessions. (GS)

This article is concerned with an environmental education program designed to allow students, grades five through eight, to investigate important ecological relationships. The course has two phases, the awareness phase whereby students construct the Environmental-Ecological Web, and the involvement phase whereby they use it to investigate local…

Presents the view that formal assignments such as problem sheets to be solved at home within a given amount of time are detrimental to the development of a mature outlook in college students. Presents an alternative to this approach. (GS)

Given is information on a federally funded environmental education program based on field experience and community awareness. Problem-solving methods were used to involve students in local environmental issues. Field experiences included trips to the mountains and seashore and community projects in water quality, recycling, and nature trail…

Chemists have bemoaned for years their students' inability to solve problems in introductory chemistry courses. However, at least part of this inability must be attributed to the fact that chemists have historically tried to teach their students to solve problems by doing nothing more than working examples. In recent years, chemists have begun to…

Outlines the academic responsibilities connected with the nation's transition to the metric system and indicates how these responsibilities relate to the general task of problem solving. (GS)

The envrionmental education project, "A Problem Approach," was designed to involve University faculty and community leaders in a number of goals. They attempted to produce a series of audio-taped slide presentations designed to develop a working level of environmental literacy in the project participants and in those people who…

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INVENTORY OF SCIENCE PROCESSES INCLUDED THE DESCRIPTION OF A MODEL OF INQUIRY AND AN INSTRUMENT TO SAMPLE THESE INQUIRY BEHAVIORS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS. THE BEHAVIORS OF SEARCHING, DATA PROCESSING, VERIFYING, DISCOVERING, ASSIMILATING AND ACCOMMODATING WERE IDENTIFIED AS COMPONENTS OF THE MODEL OF INQUIRY. THE TAB…

Investigates the possible relationships between the ability of introductory college genetics students to perform Piagetian formal operational tasks and their ability to solve problems requiring genetic analysis. (Author/GA)

Inquiry is defined here as the scientist's method of problem solving. Presents a bent wire phenomenon activity designed to engage students in the active process of solving a problem in science. A model is proposed to explain the phenomenon. (MA)

Presents compact algorithms, suitable for use with hand held calculators, for the calculation of potentiometric titration curves. (SL)