Abd-El-Khalick, F. and N. G. Lederman (2000). "The Influence of History of Science Courses on Students' Views of Nature of Science." Journal of Research in Science Teaching 37(10): 1057-1095.

Adamczyk, P. and M. Willson (1996). "Using Concept Maps with Trainee Physics Teachers." Physics Education 31(6): 374-81.

Describes how the techniqueof concept mapping can be useful for identifying gaps in preservice teachers' knowledge. Validity of the technique was tested using blind interviews with a representative sample of eight trainees. Has potential as a valuable self-diagnostic tool for teachers teaching outside their area of specialization. (DDR)

Higher education systems need a posture of planning for unplanned change. To promote a climate for open-ended trial and error, there needs to be a differentiation of types of institutions and a willingness to sponsor and reward institutional experimentation.

Two alternative paradigms for undergraduate education are compared; one holds teaching as its purpose, the other learning. The natures of the two paradigms are examined on the following dimensions: mission and purposes, criteria for success, teaching and learning structures, underlying learning theory, concepts of productivity and methods of funding, and faculty and staff roles in instruction and governance. (MSE)

Brand discusses why he thinks colleges and universities should consider a new system of faculty roles with distinct pathways for those most interested and gifted in each of three areas: teaching, research, and professional service. He describes his proposal, claiming that such a structure would enable universities to thrive as the nations 21st century research and creative engines.

College students (N=52) were given unfamiliar or novel problems (written and interview responses) to determine how they characterize living things, criteria they use to distinguish between living/dead/nonliving, and to determine if their idea of life included the interrelationship between organisms and biosphere. Results and implications are discussed. (Author/SK)

This special section of four papers explores the issue of authentic scientific inquiry. Our basic premise, presented in the first paper by Chinn and Malhotra, is that many inquiry activities found in schools fail to capture important characteristics of authentic scientific inquiry. By authentic inquiry, we mean the activities that scientists engage in while conducting their research (Dunbar, 1995; Latour & Woolgar, 1986). Chinn and Malhotra present an analysis of key features of authentic inquiry, and show that most of these features have not been incorporated into most inquiry tasks designed for use in schools. Their analysis points to the importance of three research goals: (a) to develop more complex inquiry tasks that incorporate more of the features of authentic scientific inquiry, (b) to investigate reasoning strategies that are effective on these more complex tasks, and (c) to investigate instructional techniques that succeed at helping students learn effective reasoning strategies. Collectively, the remaining three papers in the special section address these three research goals.

A main goal of science education is to help students learn to reason scientifically. A main way to facilitate learning is to engage students in inquiry activities such as conducting experiments. This article presents a theoretical framework for evaluating inquiry tasks in terms of how similar they are to authentic science. The framework helps identify the respects in which these reasoning tasks are similar to and different from real scientific research. The framework is based on a recent theory of reasoning, models-of-data theory. We argue that inquiry tasks commonly used in schools evoke reasoning processes that are qualitatively different from the processes employed in real scientific inquiry. More-over, school reasoning tasks appear to be based on an epistemology that differs from the epistemology of authentic science. Inquiry tasks developed by researchers have increasingly captured features of authentic science, but further improvement is still possible. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our analysis for research, assessment, and instruction.

A seminar series at one institution sparked insights about whole new approaches to enhancing faculty scholarship that connect with the spirit of collegiality and inquiry so vital to any flourishing academic culture. By creating an enabling rather than a coercive organizational setting to enhance faculty development, Emory has tapped into an ongoing dialogue among faculty and has collaborated with faculty about the types of programs that best serve their needs.

Whether it be at the level of the individual, the academic department, or the entire physics teaching profession, nearly all of us want to do a good job. But how can we know if we are succeeding? To what extent can we trust traditional measures of excellence in teaching, and what alternative measures resting on differentÑperhaps even unfashionableÑassumptions might we consider?

Responses of 322 university sophomores (education majors) on an evolution problem "How could the bat have evolved wings?" are analyzed and classified. Concludes that misunderstandings are logical. (PR)

Hansen and Stephens argue for a return to the moral foundations of higher education. They provide a model for a learner-centered system that does not lose its moral center.

Provides insights on the use of case studies as a method of instruction. The article partitions into the following sections: (1) Case studies as a teaching technique; (2) How to write a case; (3) How to teach a case; and (4) Pluses and minuses of the case method. (ZWH)

The campaign approach to change on college campuses helps leaders win people's attention and active help--the two scarcest resources in today's overloaded institutions of higher education--by cutting through the clutter and mobilizing people around a strategic theme.

Scientific inquiry is a complex skill. Aspiring physicians need to learn these skills so that they can be educated consumers of medical research as well as being collaborators in different kinds of clinical trials. But school science often fails to provide the kind of authentic tasks needed to help students develop appropriate reasoning skills and epistemological beliefs. In this study, we compared a group of expert cancer researchers with four groups of fourth year medical students (the “novice” groups) engaged in the task of designing a clinical trial to test a new cancer drug using a computer-based modeling tool, the Oncology Thinking Cap. Although the experts and novices reached similar end-points, their reasoning processes differed considerably. For the experts, this was a task that required learning about the drug they were testing. The novices needed to learn about designing clinical trials, particularly about how variables interacted with each other, as well as learning about the drug. One of the major lessons learned by the novice student groups was just how complex clinical trial design really is.

Adding controversy in the classroom can really stir students up and get them really engaged in what they are learning. Conflict is to student learning what the internal combustion engine is to the automobile.

‘‘Practice makes perfect, but only if you do it right.’’ Typical physics students practice extensively through the large quantities of homework they do. But research in introductory physics instruction shows that despite this practice, students often do not learn much in introductory physics. Students often do not focus their practice on the skills ~such as concept interpretation, and generating a physical representation of a problem! that they need in order to solve physics problems flexibly and reliably. They often focus their practice instead on simply getting an answer. By omitting practice of important skills, it is likely that those skills will not be learned. This paper identifies communication difficulties between students and between students and instructors as important sources of barriers to achieving high-quality student practice. Some strategies to address communication difficulties in the context of small group in-class problem solving are proposed. A classroom peer-collaborative structure, Supervised Practice, that implements these strategies is described, and the impact of the classroom design on the quality of student practice is investigated.

The purpose of this study was to determine if factors to predict predict success in college biology (i.e., prior knowledge of biology or reasoning ability) depend on the instructional method employed (i.e., expository or inquiry). Reasoning ability was found to account for a significant amount of variance in final examination scores, regardless of instructional method. (Author/DKM)

The barriers to teaching excellence in higher education are far deeper than evaluation problems and the reward system. Research values--cognitive,cerebral, exclusive and solitary--actively work against the values implicit in teaching excellence -- those that are intuitive, relational, inclusive and communal.

Despite advances over the last two decades made in pedagogical innovations such as cooperative learning and less reliance on lecturing, real reform remains elusive since teaching--unlike research--is yet to be tied to higher education's incentive and reward system.

A central challenge in the design of science education graduate seminars is to create a context that will be meaningful to students, and at the same time support students in becoming knowledgeably skillful with respect to the topics of the course. This paper reports on the design and implementation of a project-based learning environment for a graduate seminar that immersed students in a real-world context. This seminar experience was organized around the design, and creation of a real-world "tangible artifact," the Internet Learning Forum (ILF), and embodied many of the design principles for project-based learning environments that have emerged from the literature. The ILF is a video centered, Web-based learning forum designed to support the professional development of in-service and pre-service mathematics and science teachers. Researching, designing and implementing the ILF provided an authentic, situated learning experience for the students and faculty participating in this course. An examination of this process and the theoretical basis behind these efforts serves to inform future project-based learning efforts in science education seminars.

If previous "movements" in higher education teach people anything, the cause of undergraduate reform will prevail through the agency of "outside" developments. One such development is the World Wide Web, which is a fundamental, transformative medium.

The study reported here was designed to substantiate the findings of previous research on the use of inquiry-based laboratory activities in introductory college physics courses. The authors sought to determine whether limited use of inquiry activities as a supplement to a traditional lecture and demonstration curriculum would improve student achievement in introductory classes for preservice teachers and general education students. Achievement was measured by responses to problems designed to test conceptual understanding as well as overall course grades. We analyzed the effect on selected student outcome measures in a preliminary study in which some students engaged in inquiry activities and others did not, and interviewed students about their perceptions of the inquiry activities. In the preliminary study, preservice elementary teachers and female students showed significantly higher achievement after engaging such activities, but only on exam questions relating directly to the material covered in the exercises. In a second study we used a common exam problem to compare the performance of students who had engaged in a revised version of the inquiry activities with the performance of students in algebra and calculus-based classes. The students who had engaged in inquiry investigations significantly outperformed the other students.

Students in general and science-oriented curriculum courses used concept mapping as the basis for developing lesson plans after having first learned the technique through a "fast-track" approach developed by the author. Resulting lesson plans were high in quality with few, if any, sequencing errors. (LZ)

Research on the learning and teaching of physics is essential for cumulative improvement in physics instruction. Pursuing this goal through systematic research is efficient and greatly increases the likelihood that innovations will be effective beyond a particular instructor or institutional setting. The perspective taken is that teaching is a science as well as an art. Research conducted by physicists who are actively engaged in teaching can be the key to setting high (yet realistic)standards, to helping students meet expectations, and to assessing the extent to which real learning takes place.

In spite of impressive resources directed toward undergraduate reform in the past 30 years--no revolution has occurred. Until the whole system is changed, beginning with graduation requirements, there will be no further substantive improvement.

Like no other aspect of higher education, tenure has become a lightning rod for criticism about how the academy functions. It is a rallying cry for those who seek to change the incentives they believe lead faculty to prefer research over teaching. A study examining the role that incentive and reward systems play in influencing faculty thought and behavior is discussed.

While the magnitude of increase in accountability varies for different sets of schools, colleges and universities across the institutional spectrum are both hearing and heeding the calls of their constituencies--as well as just how much and how often questions of accountability are entangled with concerns about a shifting market for students.

A revolution is taking place in education, one that deals with the philosophy of how one teaches, of the relationship between teacher and student, of the way in which a classroom is structured, and the nature of curriculum. At the heart is a powerful pedagogy, one that’s been developing over the past 100 years.

Discussed is the relationship of concept-mapping by students to the meaningful learning of genetics and ecological concepts. The implications of these results for teacher education in biology are addressed. (KR)

Parikh discusses an experience in a college-level project-based learning group. Parikh learned from the course how to use criticism effectively.

The results of the National Study of Student Learning, a study conducted across 23 colleges universities, indicate that the presumption that what works for one student will work for others is faulty thinking. Pascarella discusses what the study revealed about student factors such as Greek affiliation, on and off-campus employment, and cultural diversity.

Unlike the criteria used by national magazines to rank institutional excellence--resources and selective admissions--research shows that within-college experiences tend to count substantially more than between-college characteristics. The effective educational practices approach is used to make comparison among institutions, the validity of those comparisons will be enhanced if student responses are based as fully as possible on low-interference measures.

Individual teachers of college level physics sometimes develop deep insights into how their students learn and what elements of classroom instruction are valuable in facilitating the learning process. Yet these insights rarely persist beyond the individual instructor. Educational methods seem to cycle from one fad to another, rarely cumulating increasingly powerful knowledge in the way scientists expect understanding to grow. In this paper I explore the character of our understanding of the physical world and of teaching about it. The critical factor is using ‘‘the culture of science’’Ñthe set of processes that allow us to build a community consensus knowledge base. Elements of the beginning of a base for our educational knowledge are discussed and examples given from discipline-based physics education research.

A computer support environment (SCI-WISE) for learning and doing science inquiry projects was designed. SCI-WISE incorporates software advisors that give general advice about a skill such as hypothesizing. By giving general advice (rather than step-by-step procedures), the system is intended to help students conduct experiments that are more epistemologically authentic. Also, students using SCI-WISE can select the type of advice the advisors give and when they give advice, as well as modify the advisors’ knowledge bases. The system is based partly on a theoretical framework of levels of agency and goal orientation. This framework assumes that giving students higher levels of agency facilitates higher-level goal orientations (such as mastery or knowledge building as opposed to task completion) that in turn produce higher levels of competence. Astudy of sixth grade science students was conducted. Students took a pretest questionnaire that measured their goal orientations for science projects and their inquiry skills. The students worked in pairs on an open-ended inquiry project that requires complex reasoning about human memory. The students used one of two versions of SCI-WISEÑone that was modifiable and one that was not. After finishing the project, the students took a posttest questionnaire similar to the pretest, and evaluated the version of the system they used. The main results showed that (a) there was no correlation of goal orientation with grade point average, (b) knowledge-oriented students using the modifiable version tended to rate SCI-WISE more helpful than task-oriented students, and (c) knowledge-oriented pairs using the nonmodifiable version tended to have higher posttest inquiry skills scores than other pair types.

Professors will not meet the needs for more and better higher education until professors become designers of learning experiences and not teachers. The important basis of colleges, one which college administrators should remember, is that the learning takes prevalence over the teaching.

Outlines the use of concept maps as a tool for science curriculum development and discusses the changes that occur in the teacher's view of the curriculum with successive revisions of the maps. Describes and analyzes the maps created by sixth-grade teachers. (PR)

Presents the theoretical foundation for discovery learning and argues that it is a version of science in the real world as scientists live it rather than science as calcified in textbooks. (DDR)

The experiential learning model of Kolb provides a framework for examining the selection of a broader range of classroom activities than is in current use.

This study documents an instructional methodology to teach a fundamental reasoning skill during scientific inquiry: the evaluation of empirical evidence against multiple hypotheses. Using the “design experiment” approach, with iterative cycles we developed an instructional framework that lends itself to authentic scientific inquiry by providing a non-traditional approach to three aspects of learning: the activities students are engaged in during scientific inquiry, the tools students use while constructing knowledge, and the assessment of learning outcomes. The present article focuses on the contribution of two components of this instructional framework: the effect of technology-based knowledge-representation tools and the effect of reflective assessment on learning to act and think scientifically. The technological tools of the framework allowed students to represent their developing knowledge of natural phenomena with either graphical mapping or with word-processed prose. The reflective assessment we used was a form of inquiry rubrics that provided clear expectations for optimal progress throughout the entire process of inquiry by indicating specific assessment criteria for the various components of scientific inquiry. The results indicated that in real-life-like classroom investigations designed to teach students how to evaluate data in relation to theories, the use of evidence mapping is superior to prose writing. Furthermore, this superior effect of evidence mapping was greatly enhanced by the use of reflective assessment throughout the inquiry process. Modes of representational guidance explain both the superior effect of evidence mapping as well as the discrepancy between the effects of explicit reflection on evidence mapping compared to prose writing. These results have fundamental implications for the development of cognitively-based classroom learning environments and for the design of further research on learning.

A control group of 40 eighth graders completed a unit on elements and compounds. An experimental group of 42 completed concept maps on the same topic. Results of a one-tailed T test demonstrated the usefulness of concept maps as advance organizers. (KR)

Using three active-learning strategies, students perform a series of molecular biology experiments to identify unknown plasmid DNA. The presented model combines directed and investigative laboratories into a "stream" of lab exercises that build on each other, teaching students how research is really practiced by scientists.