Understanding how situational features of assessment tasks impact reasoning is important for many educational pursuits, notably the selection of curricular examples to illustrate phenomena, the design of formative and summative assessment items, and determination of whether instruction has fostered the development of abstract schemas divorced from…

The use of a problem-solving approach in teaching zoology is examined, especially in teaching the topic of insects in the seventh grade. (Author/ND)

The case for integrating the problem-solving approach to learning with traditional explanatory and demonstrative approaches, but not replacing them, when teaching biology is presented. (ND)

Reasons are provided that show the goal-directed study of subject material through the problem-solving approach which results in sounder learning. (Author/ND)

This document reports on the Videotape Classroom Study of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). This exploratory research project focused on eighth-grade mathematics instruction in Germany, Japan, and the United States, videotaping one complete lesson in each sampled classroom during the 1994-95 school year. The…

The evolution of argument that the study of science develops skills, attitudes of mind, or ways of thinking and behaving that are transferable to other areas of experience is discussed by looking at ways in which it has been deployed by people who sought to expand or alter the role of science in the school curriculum in Great Britain. (RM)

Forms and characteristics of small group physics instruction in the Russian university are examined and in some cases, compared to those used in Britain. Topics discussed include the lecture method, classroom communication during lectures, postlecture discussion, specialized small-audience lectures, problem solving, individual research projects,…