The purpose of this study was to redefine and validate science education curricular goals for grades K-12 in the 1980s. Goals were obtained through a survey of recent educational literature. The goals were then compiled into an instrument, Science Education Curricular Goals for Validation, which was mailed to 100 science educators for validation by ranking each of the goals on a 1-7 scale (with 1 being the least important and 7 being the most important). The science educators were randomly selected from the membership of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, an organization dedicated to research in science education with a United States membership of 582 as of October 1980. The sample of 100 science educators represented 17% of the total United States membership. Medians and ranks for each of the 17 goals were calculated and the additional goals suggested by respondents, organized with minimal editing, were reported. The results of the study indicated that, although there was some agreement on the initial 17 goals in the instrument, there was also considerable disagreement as evidenced by the suggestions from respondents of 41 additional goals. The highest goal was one dealing with the processes, concepts, principles, and generalizations of sciences. The lowest ranked goal was one dealing with the integration of the humanities and the sciences. In the additional 41 goals suggested by respondents, there were several that were in direct opposition to those in the original 17 or to those additionally suggested by respondents. It was concluded that considerable further research is needed before a cohesive set of science education curricular goals can be established.

The purpose of this study was to understand one case of undergraduate inquiry-based science instruction through the words and actions of college science faculty. The case details the progression of curriculum development and implementation of Frontiers of Science. The specific aim of this study was to examine how a team of multi-disciplinary college science faculty created an inquiry-based course, centralized around scientific Habits of Mind, for undergraduate non-science majors. The participants for this study included four faculty instructors. I found the instructors’ course goals—(a) teaching students how scientists do science, and (b) using multi-disciplinary content to develop students’ content knowledge of the big ideas in science—were consistent with my field observations and the students’ evaluations of their experience in the course. This study also documents novel Communities of Practice (CoP) within the science faculty and Science Teaching Fellows (STFs). Cognitive Apprenticeship occurred between the faculty to the more novice STFs and helped to increase pedagogical skills as well as refine formal and informal assessments. This study is the one of first to document college science instructors centering their instruction around the scientific Habits of Mind to teach multidisciplinary science content in both large lecture format (500+ students) and smaller seminars (20 students) using inquiry-based activities.

This study investigated evidence of how students’ mental models of fundamental kinematic relations evolved (i.e., developed cognitively over time) as observed during an introductory course in calculus-based classical mechanics. The core of the curriculum is based on a claim known as Galileo’s principle of relativity. The course material comprised a standard sequence of topics in classical mechanics, reconfigured through a framework scaffolded from this principle. The research focused specifically on students’ mental models for the concept of velocity. Four instruments were developed and integrated into a suite of variegated tools for data collection. The suite probed indicators across diverse domains or modalities of mental processing: visual, quantitative, and verbal. Evidence of student mental models included student data derived from answers to multiple-choice questions, short written passages, symbolic computations, quantitative answers, pictorial sketches, and semi-structured interviews. A limiting model, or rubric, for approaching a comprehensive mental model for velocity coalesced after results from axial coding of sketches and interviews were considered in connection with the contingency tables made from short answer frequency counts and the Wilcoxon mean comparison of problem-solving tests. The rubric consisted of three identifiable tiers that ascended in cognitive sophistication. Statistically significant evidence was found for growth from the first to the second stage of this three-stage rubric for student velocity models. By the end of the semester, students showed increased capacity to treat velocity as a relation between two objects, rather than as a property of one object. Students typically developed a correct habit of demanding a second object when asserting velocity for a first. When provided with a second or reference object, many students demonstrated an acquired ability to adjust their conclusion for target velocity. Little to no statistically significant evidence was found, however, to suggest growth in student mental models from the second to the third stage of the three-stage rubric. In particular, the typical student mental model proved too fragile to manage problems involving a third moving object or a second dimension of space. Evidence was insufficient to indicate deliberate student distinction of the relational character of velocity from the relational quality of an interaction such as force. Across the visual and problem-solving domains, stage three difficulty was attributed to the mismanagement of arrows known as vectors. In the verbal domain, questions about three-object scenarios revealed conflation of velocity with force. In light of the data from all three domains, velocity vectors were considered in direct connection with force vectors. A cognitive connection between velocity vectors and force vectors was identified as a potential source of dissonance. The report of the study concludes by considering ways to scaffold the teaching of velocity vectors from the teaching of displacement vectors. The recommendation for improved physics pedagogy and future research involves increased visual, verbal, and quantitative emphases on velocity as a bearing, as distinct from an interaction.

An adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) has become increasingly important for science teachers in South Africa as comprehensive curricular reforms over the past decade include promoting informed understandings of the ontological and epistemological bases of scientific knowledge and the methods of science. The main objective of this study was to explore the NOS understandings held by a sample of science teachers in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data were generated via questionnaires (n=136), semi-structured interviews (n=31), and classroom observations (n=8). The teacher interviews, which were informed by the questionnaire data, enabled further interrogation of the teachers’ philosophical positions. Their classroom practices were examined within the framework of these philosophical positions and the requirements of the new curriculum. The effect of implicit and explicit instruction in NOS on these teachers’ beliefs and classroom activities was also considered. A mixed-method approach informed by positivist and interpretivist perspectives was used for the collection and analysis of the data. The data suggests that explicit instruction in NOS resulted in more informed conceptions of science and the scientific enterprise, and that these conceptions were reflected, to a degree, in their classroom behaviours. However, it was noted that the teachers in this study often held philosophically eclectic views of the nature of scientific knowledge and how scientists develop ideas. Similarly, the South African National Curriculum Statement portrays science in contrasting ways, i.e. often within a modern/realist framework, but in other instances within postmodern/relativistic understandings (particularly in terms of indigenous knowledge systems). As such, an approach which aims at providing a firm foundation for understanding NOS ideas within a modern/realist perspective before emphasising the postmodern/relativist aspects of the scientific enterprise is suggested for teacher training and curriculum development.