Describes an investigation of 35 secondary school students to examine the relationship among scores on 10 Piagetian tasks used to assess levels of concrete and formal reasoning and problem solving abilities and scores on a standardized reading examination used to measure reading ability. (Author/GS)

Describes a course designed to demonstrate the relationship between design, manufacturing technology, and materials engineering. The course uses a lecture-discussion and laboratory-workshop approach including an analysis of engineering case histories and several service failures. (GS)

Describes a physics laboratory experiment for nonscience majors intended to illustrate indirect experimental methods of sciences treating objects too small for sensory observation. The student explores and attempts to identify an object in a closed container, using provided experimental tools and small openings in the opaque lid. (MLH)

Based on the premise that the quality of domain-specific knowledge is the main determinant of expertise in that domain, an examination was made of the shift from considering general, domain-independent skills and procedures, in both cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, to the study of the knowledge base. Empirical findings and…

This discussion of heuristic learning focuses on inquiry and problem solving: their distinctions, uses, and advantages over traditional methods of science teaching. (MLH)

This presentation, by an invited speaker at the 46th annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, describes simulation techniques used in the medical education program at the University of Illinois. Medical students interact with simulated patients and acquire problem-solving competencies for use in working with…

A study on the applicability of Snyder's 1968 prototheory of instructional efficiency to a complex problem-solving situation was made, using 120 sixth grade students of three geographically separated Pennsylvania schools in 1972. Four task groups, 30 subjects (Ss) each, were formed by randomly assigning four task arrangements to Ss in answering a…

The development and validation of a test of science problem solving skills for use in grades one through three are described. Norms (grade placement scores) for children in urban, outer-urban, and suburban areas are provided for the total score on alternate forms of the test, each of which uses two physical science problems to assess (1) the…

Five study segments of the Self-Paced Physics Course materials are presented in this fourth problems and solutions book used as a part of student course work. The subject matter is related to electric charges, insulators, Coulomb's law, electric fields, lines of force, solid angles, conductors, motion of charged particles, dipoles, electric flux,…

Four study segments of the Self-Paced Physics Course materials are presented in this fifth problems and solutions book used as a part of student course work. The subject matter is related to work in electric fields, potential differences, parallel plates, electric potential energies, potential gradients, capacitances, and capacitor circuits.…

Four study segments of the Self-Paced Physics Course materials are presented in this sixth problems and solutions book used as a part of student course work. The subject matter is related to electric currents, current densities, resistances, Ohm's law, voltages, Joule heating, electromotive forces, single loop circuits, series and parallel…

Five study segments of the Self-Paced Physics Course materials are presented in this seventh problems and solutions book used as a part of student course work. The content is related to magnetic fields, magnetic moments, forces on charged particles in magnetic fields, electron volts, cyclotron, electronic charge to mass ratio, current-carrying…

Found that the following variables significantly affected the students' performance of a task involving science skills: type of rule and number of attributes used in the prediction task, and whether the student was given a verbal description of the rule to be used. (MLH)

Describes a learning activity when students construct a model of a buried valley by using computer assistance. Explanation of the problem includes mathematical models and illustrations. (MA)