INVESTIGATIONS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION Pditnr

Abstracts and abstractors' critiques of 10 published research reports related to misconceptions, attitudes, gender and miscellaneous issues are presented in this issue. Studies include: (1) the development, revision, refinement, and partial validation of an instrument to assess preservice elementary teachers' process orientation toward science; (2) a comparison of the effectiveness of three different methods for pooling student scores to provide daily data points for a time series analysis; (3) a study done to determine underlying factors associated with students' interests in science and to see if these factors differed by gender and race; (4) an attempt to identify concepts and propositions necessary for grade 10 students to comprehend the mechanisms of inheritance and to see which of these concepts and propositions were most frequently misunderstood; (5) a study hypothesizing that inadequacies in textbooks contribute to student misunderstandings and analyzing the genetics content in three widely used high school biology textbooks; (6) an examination of the conceptions of the human circulatory system held by students from grade 5 through college; (7) a study which examined the effect of preservice elementary teachers' cognitive responses on their attitudes toward energy conservation; (8) the validation of the Student Opinion Survey in Chemistry (SOSC), an existing student attitude scale, and a comparison of cross-national data collected using this instrument; (9) an examination of science and mathematics enrollment during high school and college concerning achievement, participation, and sex differences among students; and (10) ans and abstractors' critiques of 10 published research reports related to misconceptions, attitudes, gender and miscellaneous issues are presented in this issue. Studies include: (1) the development, revision, refinement, and partial validation of an instrument to assess preservice elementary teachers' process orientation toward science; (2) a comparison of the effectiveness of three different methods for pooling student scores to provide daily data points for a time series analysis; (3) a study done to determine underlying factors associated with students' interests in science and to see if these factors differed by gender and race; (4) an attempt to identify concepts and propositions necessary for grade 10 students to comprehend the mechanisms of inheritance and to see which of these concepts and propositions were most frequently misunderstood; (5) a study hypothesizing that inadequacies in textbooks contribute to student misunderstandings and analyzing the genetics content in three widely used high school biology textbooks; (6) an examination of the conceptions of the human circulatory system held by students from grade 5 through college; (7) a study which examined the effect of preservice elementary teachers' cognitive responses on their attitudes toward energy conservation; (8) the validation of the Student Opinion Survey in Chemistry (SOSC), an existing student attitude scale, and a comparison of cross-national data collected using this instrument; (9) an examination of science and mathematics enrollment during high school and college concerning achievement, participation, and sex differences among students; and (10) an examination of the predictive validity of various tests for success of women in a National Science Foundation Career Facilitation Project. Two responses to the critiques in this issue are included.