When parents or policy-makers are asked to describe an excellent education, they often describe in fairly abstract terms the presence of a rich curriculum with highly qualified teachers, outstanding school resources and extensive educational opportunities. Nevertheless, excellent inputs to education provide no guarantee for excellent outcomes. To…

The Faulkes Telescope Project and its educational aims are briefly summarised. Research to evaluate its impact in inspiring excitement and interest among students is described. The Faulkes Telescope in Hawaii was used to provide images for assessed coursework based on two of the Faulkes "education/research" projects on galaxies.…

The authors examined the influence of social cognitive variables on students' interest in environmental science careers and investigated differences between White and ethnic minority students on several career-related variables. The sample consisted of 161 undergraduate science majors (124 White students, 37 ethnic minority students). Results of…

Girls Into Science and Technology (GIST), an action research project that ran from 1979 to 1983, aimed to study the reasons for girls' under-achievement in science and technology and to take action to remedy the situation. A cohort of 1,700 young people in ten co-educational comprehensive schools in the Greater Manchester area were followed from…

This pamphlet gives an introduction to the principles of astronomical picture-taking. Chapters included are: (1) "Getting Started" (describing stationary cameras, sky charts and mapping, guided cameras, telescopes, brightness of astronomical subjects, estimating exposure, film selection, camera filters, film processing, and exposure for…

An investigation derived from the logico-structural theory of world view was conducted for the purpose of examining the relationship between science interest and variations in the causal universal within college students' world views. This required the development of a special pen-and-paper instrument for detecting worldview variations in the…

The FIPSE-funded Science and Self-Determination Project at the University of Colorado at Boulder (established through the American Indian Educational Opportunity Program) was threefold. The project was: (1) to provide a month-long summer science/math institute on the university campus for 35 Native American Secondary students from a 10-state…

In this study, 1,500 men and women who were high school seniors in 1942 and 1943 and who competed in the first two annual Science Talent Searches for the Westinghouse Science Scholarship and Awards reported on their careers in 1957 in a brief questionnaire. Of these, 136 filled in a comprehensive supplementary questionnaire and were interviewed.…

Comparison of the attitudinal responses of eight-year-old children who studied science in a National Science Foundation sponsored program, "Science Curriculum Improvement Study," with responses of eight-year-old children who studied science using a textbook series, "Concepts in Science," showed no differences. However, both programs did appear to…

Reported is a study based on the assumptions that the attitude of elementary-age pupils toward the psychological object, science, affects cognitive learnings in science, that pupil's attitude toward science is affected by his teacher's attitude toward science, and that the teacher's attitude is affected by his knowledge of the subject. The study…

An instrument was developed to assess attitudes about science and administered to 505 fourth, fifth and sixth grade pupils. Attitudinal objectives found in the literature were selected and defined in behavioral terms by a panel of judges. Items for the Science Attitude Scale (SAS) were based on selected objectives and revised to appropriate…

In the study, one of each of pairs of average and high ability eighth-grade classes was designated, by random means, as the experimental class. Students in the experimental classes viewed projected 2 x 2 colored slides which represented sequences of the same laboratory activities as those performed by the manipulative group. All other…

Hands-on experiences are encouraged and some examples given to promote discovery learning for the very young. (EB)

Reviews problems associated with the science education of less able and low motivated students. (SL)

Discusses building memory ability, Agatha Christie's and Sherlock Holmes' chemical abilities, and excerpts from now unpublished laboratory manuals. (SL)