The purpose of this research program was to explore the effectiveness of the Predict- Observe-Explain (POE) teachingllearning technique to diagnose students' understanding of science and identify students' level of achievement with reference to the Science Student Outcome Statements for Australian schools. This research employed an interpretive action research approach with a sample of students from three Australian metropolitan high schools in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12, whose ages ranged between 14 and 17 years. Three data collection methods were used to generate data for interpretation, namely, written POE responses of students, in-class journals and student interviews. Data collected were interpreted using three theoretical perspectives, namely, Chi et al.'s theory of ontological categories, Hewson and Hennessey's conceptual change theory to determine the epistemological status of students' understanding of science, and Chinn and Brewer's model to classify types of students' responses to contradictory observations. This purpose of using this methodology was to obtain an in-depth, plausible and credible account of students' understanding and their level of achievement. POE tasks were concerned with heat and the expansion of water, solubility of salt, and power and resistance of light globes. The data revealed common ideas amongst students that are contrary to scientists' science; furthermore, students showed that they were able to articulate their own ideas based on the POE tasks. The findings in this research reveal that these POEs were effective in capturing a range of possible student observations and prediction outcomes when worded in an open-ended format. / Quality information on students' understanding and on the way they responded to contradictory data was obtained when POEs were administered by teacher demonstrations and were designed to produce phenomena that were clear, immediate and had only one aspect to observe. Furthermore, the data suggest that POEs are effective in identifying students' achievement across levels within a substrand of the Australian Student Outcome Statements and enable the teacher to observe and document a spread of achievement over a range of levels rather that a single outcome. The results of this research suggest that POEs are effective in diagnosing students' understanding of science and their level of achievement. The POE tasks can be used by teachers to insightfully design learning activities and strategies that start from the students' viewpoint rather than that of the teacher or the scientist. Findings in this research have implications for curriculum development and learning strategies, teacher development, and the promotion and assessment of students' understanding and level of achievement.

Existe un mayor enfoque de estudios de investigación hacia profesionales intérpretes que intérpretes en formación. Esta situación se evidencia aún más en la cantidad de estudios acerca del control de estrés de estudiantes de interpretación. Por ello, la presente investigación es un estudio de caso que tiene como finalidad describir el manejo de estrés de los estudiantes de últimos ciclos de los Talleres de Interpretación en la Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC). El presente estudio se centra desde la perspectiva de los estudiantes para identificar los estresores, el nivel de estrés, las técnicas y estrategias de control de estrés de los mismos. El estudio tiene un enfoque mixto, cuantitativo y cualitativo; por ende, se propone aplicar las técnicas de encuestas y grupos focales. Para los dos primeros subobjetivos (estresores y nivel de estrés) se utilizará el instrumento del cuestionario. En este, se encuestarán a todas las secciones de los talleres de interpretación mediante el cuestionario adaptado de Chiang: Anxiety and Interpretation Learning Questionnaire (2006). En cuanto al tercer subobjetivo (estrategias y técnicas de estrés) se creará la guía del grupo focal y, en este, participarán un promedio de 4 a 5 estudiantes por nivel de taller de interpretación. Por tales fines, los sujetos de estudio serán los estudiantes de los últimos ciclos la UPC. / Nowadays, there seems to be more investigation into professional interpreters than interpreting students. This could be demonstrated by the quantity of the studies focused on interpreting students’ stress control. For this reason, the purpose of this investigation, which is a case study, is to describe stress management in the students of the interpreting workshops at Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC). Based on the students’ perspective, this study aims to identify the stressors, the level of stress, and the students’ techniques and strategies of stress control. This study has a mixed approach, quantitative and qualitative. For the first two sub objectives (stressors and level of stress) a survey will be used as an instrument. By means of Chiang’s Anxiety and Interpretation Learning Questionnaire (2006), Interpreting workshop classrooms are going to be asked. For the third sub objective (techniques and strategies of stress control) a focus group guide will be created. Thereby, the subjects of study are the UPC students of the last terms. / Trabajo de investigación