This paper explores questions about the ways in which students, teachers, administrators, and parents negotiate new sets of roles and expectations for schooling in the innovative climate of a new middle school. A new school in an Australian city has implemented a coordinated package of approaches including integrated curriculum, portfolio…

Over the past 10 years, numerous empirical investigations of learning in physics have been carried out at the Institute of Physics Education (IPE) at the University of Bremen in Germany. The objectives of these investigations were: (1) to describe in detail individual learning processes; (2) to construct theoretical principles of individual…

These proceedings contain papers from the 1994 annual meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group. Papers are divided into the following sections: (1) invited lectures; (2) working groups; (3) topic groups; (4) ad hoc groups; and (5) reports on ICMI (International Committee on Mathematical Instruction) studies. Papers include: (1)…

This proceedings is comprised of the edited papers presented at the 21st meeting of the Western Australian Science Education Association (WASEA). The 26 papers included here relate to many different topics such as proportional reasoning, the state of primary science in Western Australia, faculty culture, concept formation in elementary science,…

Science/Technology/Society (STS) is widely recognized as a major reform effort as correctives are sought around the globe to attain scientific literacy for all. The focus of this book is on STS offered as reform. The efforts during the decade from 1984-1994 have resulted in research that can be used to affect practices while also assuring that STS…

This paper describes Project THREADS (Transformations for Humanistic and Responsive Education for All Deaf Students), a program to develop a model for increasing the multicultural competence of inservice teachers of the deaf. Project THREADS is designed to facilitate changes in individual teachers and changes in their institutions while working to…

A study was conducted in a middle to upper class neighborhood in a Minnesota city to determine the practices that the Spanish teacher used to encourage full student participation and to consider whether the Freirian view of education can furnish an adequate framework for understanding this teacher's practices. Of the school's more than 500…

The purpose of this study was to describe and interpret teacher decision-making with ethnically diverse students. A new paradigmatic theoretical framework formed through the confluence of constructivism, multiculturalism, the teacher-as-decision-maker, and semiology guided the research. The research site was a suburban middle school located in the…

This annual publication contains 43 research papers on a variety of issues related to science education. Topics include the following: mature-age students; teacher professional development; spreadsheets and science instruction; the Learning in Science Project and putting it into practice; science discipline knowledge in primary teacher education;…

Different kinds of discussion methods have been developed to help students achieve different kinds of instructional objectives. The following discussion methods are analyzed from the perspective of the role demands that they make of students and teachers: (1) cooperative learning discussions; (2) the subject mastery discussion method; and (3)…

This article reports on a classroom-based case study of a group of six Year 10 students, within a class of 23 students. The study implemented constructivist-informed teaching and learning approaches within a classroom setting in the topic of optics and documented any changes in the conceptual understanding students had about seven central concepts…

This report synthesizes research on helping at-risk students meet academic standards. The studies chosen had to be published after 1984, be implemented in the United States, relate to K-12 students, directly assess students' academic achievement, address strategies that could be implemented in the regular classroom, and use strategies targeting…

This paper asserts that the tenets of a constructivist educational philosophy best meet the needs of special needs students (e.g., those who are limited English speaking, bilingual, low income, and homeless). The first section presents the tenets of a constructivist teaching philosophy. The second section discusses the implementation of best…

A five-year U.S. Department of Education Technology Innovation Challenge Grant, the NatureShift! Linking Learning to Life project was awarded in 1997 to the partnership of Dakota Science Center and the Grand Forks Public Schools (North Dakota). It was designed with partners from the Sahnish Cultural Society and the University of North Dakota to…

The use of hypermedia in education is supported by cognitive flexibility theory which indicates transfer of knowledge to real-world settings is improved when that material is learned in a case-based, associative network emphasizing complexity and links to related information. Hypermedia is further assumed to benefit education, because it resembles…