The purpose of this study was to evaluate the current status of the implementation of Benin's new elementary science curriculum. The study used the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), a model designed to evaluate the implementation of educational innovations. Specifically the study attempted to ascertain teachers' concerns about the science curriculum, the levels of use of the curriculum and the degree to which the curriculum components were implemented. The CBAM Stages of Concerns questionnaire and structured Levels of Use interview were used to collect data respectively on teachers' concerns and level of use. An Innovation Configuration checklist was developed to measure teachers' patterns of use with respect to each of the curriculum key components. The study was directed toward 57 third and fourth grade teachers involved in the implementation of the new curriculum. Findings of the study indicated that teachers have their most intense concerns in the information, personal, and collaboration areas. Regarding teachers' level of use of the science curriculum, the majority of teachers were still trying to solve mechanical problems such as material gathering, lesson planning, and time management. With respect to curriculum components, fundamental components, such as teaching methodology and evaluation technique, were not implemented at the acceptable level. These findings have implications for research and staff development programs for a successful implementation of the science curriculum. Specific plans for improvement include structuring training programs to meet individual teacher needs and concerns, establishing an efficient support system, and providing resources and materials. / Graduation date: 1997

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to identify selected criteria in teacher effectiveness in the secondary science classrooms to find out how students feel about these criteria as compared with the opinions of science teachers and administrators.The following criteria were selected:1. Teacher's abilities in lecturing2. Abilities in laboratory teaching3. Abilities in leading discussions4. Abilities in maintaining good discipline5. Fairness in dealing with students6. Understanding of student problems7. Use of multi-media presentations.A forty-one item questionnaire based on the above mentioned criteria with two opinion questions was formulated.The population for the study consisted of 32 administrators, 34 secondary science teachers, and 747 secondary science students from 15 high schools of three sizes (small, medium, and large) in Indiana. The questionnaire was administered on-site, and the return rate for each respective group in the sample was 100 percent.One way analysis of variance was used at the .05 significance level statistically to interpret the data.Findings1. There was a significant difference found among the responses of students, teachers, and administrators for lecturing, laboratory teaching, leading discussions, maintaining good discipline, and use of multi-media presentations, but there was no significant difference found for fairness, and understanding of student problems.2. Based upon the sex of the students, there was no significant difference found for laboratory teaching and multi-media presentations, but there was a significant difference found for lecturing, discussions, discipline, fairness, and understanding of student problems.3. Based upon the grade level of students, there was a significant difference found in lecturing and laboratory teaching, but there was no significant difference found for discussions, discipline, fairness, understanding of student problems, and use of media.4. Based upon the years of teaching experience, there was a significant difference found in the opinions of teachers and administrators for lecturing, maintaining good discipline, and multi-media presentations, but no significant difference was found for laboratory, discussions, fairness, and understanding of student problems.5. The years of administrative experience had no significant effect on the opinions of administrators.6. There was no significant difference found among the opinions of administrators, teachers, and students related to the size of schools.

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published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

No description available.

This study has emerged from concerns expressed by science students, educators, and researchers, and from my own teaching experience, that writing in school science often remains disconnected from students' experience, and rarely stimulates further learning. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of open, expressive writing tasks to illustrate students' understanding of the phenomena of floating and sinking. A specially selected series of seven explorations in physical properties of matter provide a rich context for Grade Eight students and I, their teacher, to experience and explore this topic. The interconnections between lab explorations and writing in school science, and the interactions in a classroom fostering science inquiry, are central to this study. A classroom-based story is unraveled from an enactivist perspective. My analysis of students' writing tasks and reflections on learning illuminates possibilities for encouraging personal connections and embodied writing in science class. Students' insights into learning about science and about themselves through expressive ways of writing shape this story.

The goal of this research was to investigate the knowledge high school students acquire from science instruction in Zimbabwe, and their ability to reason from and apply their knowledge based on previous learning. Science educators in Zimbabwe are concerned with improving the quality of student's achievement and that students develop a conceptual understanding of basic science rather than a rote memorisation of facts and that students become better prepared to acquire science content on their own. The research reported here utilises the discourse comprehension analysis model and methods developed by Frederiksen (1975, 1986) to investigate students' learning. Based on these methods, it is possible to examine: (a) how students acquire knowledge and understanding, and (b) how they apply what they learn to reason using their conceptual knowledge. / The design of the study involved the use of three texts each of which represented different information types within a science domain, 'gas pressure'. The content of the texts was presented by the same teacher during natural classroom instruction to classes at two levels (higher and lower) of a high school grade. The first text concerned Basic Knowledge (concepts and principles) in the domain, and the second and third texts described Familiar and Unfamiliar experiments respectively within the same science domain. In addition, for both of these experiments, several types of information were presented: Procedures, Observations and Explanations. Students' responses to comprehension questions were subjected to a conceptual (propositional) analysis and coded against an 'expert' model of the content of the texts used by the teacher during instruction to the students. The study focused on identifying the extent to which the students' responses directly matched the 'expert' model or consisted of modifications (inferences) that indicated alternative (true or false) conceptual knowledge frameworks that the students may have possessed. / The major findings of this research were as follows: Students' answers to questions about their knowledge of basic concepts comprised a large number of responses that directly matched (i.e., literally recalled) the information presented by the teacher during instruction and also included a high number of incorrect inferences. Students' comprehension of the Familiar and Unfamiliar experiments was also characterised by a high degree of 'literal learning' as shown in the generally high amounts of recall of propositional information compared to inferences. Students' responses to these questions consisted mostly of Observation information, and least of Explanations. This suggests that they were more likely to recall observed events that they were to interpret. Students' reasoning was generally poor relative to their comprehension of both experiments, and their responses consisted of more recall responses than inferences. In addition, students' reasoning about the Unfamiliar experiment was characterised by a high number negative higher-order inferences. Finally, students in the higher level displayed higher levels of competence than those in the lower level, particularly in their knowledge of Procedures and Observations in contrast to Explanation information, for both experiments.

Students have a tendency to skip steps in reasoning and miss facts when drawing conclusions during problem solving. Seeing that this poses a problem, it was thought that vocalizing thinking, using the method of pair problem-solving, would help ensure that students do not make these mistakes, but rather improve their ability of solving problems systematically. The basic problem which the researcher addressed was: To what extent will the pair problem-solving method improve the students' ability in solving physical science problems? The people involved in the research were : i) Matric pupils from the secondary schools in Osizweni ii) Teachers of the schools involved. The interviews were done during one period per week for six weeks. At first pupils were given a pre-test and at the end of the interviews were given a post test. The two tests designed to be equivalent and the questions given to the experimental groups were the same as those given to the control group. Interviews carried out were tape recorded and also written down. The interviews and the tests scores were analyzed in order to determine to what extent the problem-solving skills of students improved as a result of the experiment. The results found showed that there is great improvement in the ability to solve problems with experimental groups and insignificant improvement with the control group. The statistical analysis showed that the improvement was great at at least 0,01 level of significance. There is also evidence of students solving problems systematically after they have done these interviews, and that there are other significant differences between the behavior of good and bad problem solvers. The implications of these results for classroom teachers is that the think-aloud pair problem-solving method does improve the ability of students in solving physical science problems. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1992.