As a school library media specialist in a public high school, the author seeks opportunities that will increase her knowledge base and skill level in order to positively influence the learning that takes place in her school. The author recently returned from such an opportunity when she participated in the Toyota International Teacher Program in…

While several studies have documented young children's (K-2) stereotypic views of scientists and scientific work, few have examined students' views of the social nature of scientific work and the strategies effective in broadening these views. The purpose of this study is to examine how stories about scientists influence 1st-grade students' views…

Over the past three decades, the overall percentage of women receiving degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--known collectively as the STEM disciplines--has increased dramatically. This growth tends to mask at least three other aspects of the demographics of the science and technology workforce. Unfortunately, aggregated…

Most education reform documents of the last two decades call for students to have authentic science inquiry experiences that mimic scientific research using real scientific data. In order for professional planetary scientists to provide the most useful data and professional development for K-12 teachers in support of science education reform, an…

Monk and Osborne ("Sci Educ" 81:405-424, 1997) provide a rigorous justification for why history and philosophy of science should be incorporated as an integral component of instruction and a model for how history of science should be used to promote learning of and about science. In the following essay we critique how history of science is used on…

In an integrated science/language arts/technology unit called "How Scientists Learn," students researched famous scientists from the past and cutting-edge modern-day scientists. Using biography trade books and the internet, students collected and recorded data on charts, summarized important information, and inferred meaning from text. Then they…

The author reviews studies on the contributions of scientists, describes essential qualities in significant scientific contributions, notes potential conflict between conventional excellence and creative excellence, and discusses theories of L. Machado and A. Toynbee regarding maximum development of potential as a human right. (CL)

Space is seeming less and less like empty space as new discoveries and reexaminations fill in the gaps. And, ingenuity and technology, like the Spitzer Space Telescope, is allowing examination of the far reaches of the Milky Way and beyond. Even dust is getting its due, but not the dust everyone is familiar with. People seldom consider the dust in…

Proposes films to be successful communicative devices within the scientific community by showing that other scientists respond to depictions in films and how they respond. Demonstrates that science consultants use fictional films as promotional devices for their research fields. (Author/NB)

In 2000, California introduced science content standards as part of an across the curriculum reform. This presented a special challenge for elementary teachers due to an increased emphasis on math and language arts, and limited science background and resources. This two year qualitative study looks at a professional development program that…

Immigrants are exceptionally important for U.S. technology development, accounting for almost half of the country's Ph.D. workforce in science and engineering. Most notably, the contribution of Chinese and Indian scientists and entrepreneurs in U.S. high-technology sectors increased dramatically in the 1990s. These ethnic scientific communities…

In this paper, the authors analyse how educational institutions behave in relation with the contents available through the Web. They also reflect on the features of the currently available information managers, from an educational point of view. They found there is a lack of tools for information management at low scale when it has to be used as a…

In this article, the author, who is a scientist, a wife and a mother of two preschool children talks about how these two roles exerted a disproportionate impact on her career choices. She is also an X-Gal, one of a group of nine female biologists who have banded together to offer one another advice and support as they seek careers in academic…

Over the past three decades, U.S. science policy has shifted from decentralized support of small, investigator-initiated research projects to more centralized, block grant-based, multidisciplinary research centers. No matter one's take on the "revolutionary" nature of this shift, a major consequence is that university scientists, now more than…

Electrochemistry, which combines chemistry and electronics, is an exciting field and those who are in this field are very versatile scientists. Electrochemistry is a combination of true phenomena and an instrument to teach much about other fields and its technological advances touch many other fields as well.