"The pleasure of finding things out" is a collection of short works by the Nobel Prize winning scientist Richard Feynman. The book provides insights into his infectious enthusiasm for science and his love of sharing ideas about the subject with anyone who wanted to listen. Feynman has been widely acknowledged as one of the greatest physicists of…

The author shares her personal view about when it is useful for children to record their work in science, what helps their learning, and what switches them off, describing some fairly common scenarios. In her role as an Ofsted inspector, the author is privileged to observe, talk to, and learn from dedicated, inspirational, and gifted teachers who…

Acquiring proficiency in different discourse genres involves an awareness of which syntactic structures are the most appropriate to the communicative context and purpose. This article examines two scientific research genres--conference proceedings articles and conference presentations--and compares the syntactic behaviour of a group of native…

Policy makers and researchers may have different agendas as to what constitutes "evidence". This paper reviews some of the issues currently debated in the UK and elsewhere about researchers' understandings of how social research can usefully inform the policy-making process, and their techniques for making it available. Using examples…

Why do some Ph.D.'s languish in positions with little authority, and what does educational background have to do with it? Hypotheses predicted that life scientists with Ph.D.'s from elite programs would be the most likely, those from middle-ranked programs the next most likely, and those from lower ranked programs the least likely to achieve…

Most institutional studies of science have focused on the functioning of its reward system. Less is known about perspectives scientists develop on their variously rewarded and recognized careers. This study examines people's subjective appraisals of attainment in academic science based on a sample of interviews with physicists who discussed their…

Providing undergraduates with mentored research experiences is a critical component of contemporary undergraduate science education. Although the benefits of undergraduate research experiences are apparent, the methods for mentoring young scientists as they first begin navigating the research lab environment are reinvented in labs all over the…

The Draw-an-Archaeologist Test (DART) is an easy way to elicit students' conceptions about archaeology and can be adapted to other subject matter. When implemented as the first activity of an archaeology unit, it provides a starting point for introducing archaeology and addressing students' misconceptions about it. In this drawing activity,…

There are increasing calls in the science education community for "science for citizenship" as an important goal for the school science curriculum of the 21st century. The potential influence of portrayals of science and scientists in popular culture on the achievement of this goal is explored in this paper through a review of the literature. We…

Political Science programs have long seen part of their mission as the cultivation of "critical thinking" among their undergraduates. But what exactly does critical thinking mean in our Political Science courses? Can we foster critical thinking in our classes and, if so, how? This article, based on a yearlong systematic study of an…

This study investigated the status of the emerging market for information professionals in Botswana. The respondents were the Masters graduates from the University of Botswana Library and Information Studies (LIS) program from 1996 to 2003 who are currently employed, and four employing organizations--the University of Botswana (UBL), Botswana…

Scientists often use more than the results of experiment to arrive at a result; they use anticipation and analogy to arrive at the results that fit their theories, and sometimes they correct results in the light of analogy. They also need to be clear about the difference between accuracy and precision. They do all this using not only theories, but…

The conversation between myself and Professor Lederman took place in Malmö, Sweden on August 25, 2007. The purpose of the conversation was to elaborate on the past, present and future of nature of science research and also to provide insights for beginning researchers. In this text I am providing the questions about which we talked and my…

Asian Americans have made many contributions to American life. The 1990 U.S. Census showed that Asian Americans represented about 3% of the total U.S. population. This textbook presents the stories of 16 Asian Americans and their significant accomplishments. Brief biographies are presented of: (1) Daniel K. Inouye, U.S. Senator from Hawaii; (2)…

This study examines the role of a 6- or 8-week summer university laboratory internship for 56 high ability secondary students in developing the views of these students with respect to the nature of science. Students were assessed using a gender-neutral version of the Test on Understanding Science (TOUS) as part of a pretest-posttest research…