bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Motivation and strategy use in science: Individual differences and classroom effects
Authors: Anderman Eric M. , Young Allison J. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis study examines individual and classroom‐level differences in motivation and strategy usage in sixth‐ and seventh‐grade middle school science. Results suggest that students who experience academic difficulties differ from both high achieving and special education students on measures of self‐efficacy, goal orientation, expectancy, value, and self‐concept of ability in science, with students who experience academic difficulties occasionally demonstrating less adaptive patterns of motivation and cognition than special education students in science. We used hierarchical linear modeling to examine between‐classroom differences in learning‐focused goal orientation. Findings indicate that students who have science teachers that use ability‐focused instructional practices (e.g., pointing out the best students as an example to others) are less learning focused, and exhibit a diminished relation between self‐concept of ability and being learning focused in science. Implications for science education reform are discussed.
Gender differences in response to questions on the australian national chemistry quiz
Authors: Walding Richard , Fogliani Charles , Over Ray , Bain John D. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractIn contrast to the attention given to the relative levels of achievement of boys and girls in mathematics, the question of whether there are sex differences in the solution of chemistry questions has not attracted much attention. This study compares the performance of boys and girls in the Australian National Chemistry Quiz (Chem Quiz), a multiple‐choice test conducted by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. The analyses were based on results from 27,000 students in Years 11 and 12 and 16,000 students in Year 10 who completed the Chem Quiz in 1991. Although some questions in the Chem Quiz were solved equally well by boys and girls, on many questions boys outperformed girls. The extreme case was a question answered correctly by 67% of Year 10 boys in contrast to 48% of Year 10 girls. Several reasons why boys and girls might differ in the rates they solve at least some chemistry questions are discussed, and directions for identifying the nature, extent, and basis for sex differences are outlined.
Learning from physics text: A synthesis of recent research
Authors: Alexander Patricia A. , Kulikowich Jonna M. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractLearning from physics text is described as a complex interaction of learner, text, and context variables. As a multidimensional procedure, text processing in the domain of physics relies on readers' knowledge and interest, and on readers' ability to monitor or regulate their processing. Certain textual features intended to assist readers in understanding and remembering physics content may actually work to the detriment of those very processes. Inclusion of seductive details and the incorporation of analogies may misdirect readers' attention or may increase processing demands, particularly in those cases when readers' physics knowledge is low. The questioning behaviors of teachers also impact on the task of comprehending physics texts. Finally, within the context of the classroom, the information that teachers dispense or the materials they employ can significantly influence the process of learning from physics text.
Interpreting pragmatic meaning when reading popular reports of science
Authors: Norris Stephen P. , Phillips Linda M. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractNinety‐one Grade 12 science students were asked to read five popular reports of science. The students were within 4 months of graduation, and all were taking at least one course of senior biology, chemistry, or physics. On average, the students had completed about four high school science courses. The reports were chosen from widely available published work appearing in newspapers, science magazines, and general interest magazines. The tasks given to students required them to interpret the pragmatic meaning of the reports, that is, the meaning of the reports in relation to the goals and intentions of the authors and the context set by the reports. The students interpreted statements in the reports with a bias towards truth ascription by attributing to the statements a higher degree of certainty than was expressed by the authors. Also, no more than one half of the students accurately understood the scientific status and role of statements when that understanding required contextualized interpretation on the basis of the relationships among statements in the reports. Implications for the development of scientific literacy follow from the fact that these students were top science students, yet they did not fully grasp the fundamentals of interpreting texts that are major sources of new scientific knowledge for most laypeople.
Effects of knowledge and persuasion on high‐school students' attitudes toward nuclear power plants
Authors: Showers Dennis E. , Shrigley Robert L. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractResearchers report finding correlational data to identify a positive relationship between nuclear knowledge and positive attitudes toward the use of nuclear energy. This study investigated the relationship between nuclear knowledge and nuclear attitudes and to the understanding of Science‐Technology‐Society attitudes involving technological attitude objects. This quasi‐experimental study tested the causal relationship between knowledge about nuclear power plants and attitudes toward their use in electrical generation. Subjects were presented with systematically designed communications developed to change either their knowledge about or attitude toward nuclear plants. The Standard Events of Instruction was the basis of the knowledge instruction, whereas the Learning Theory Approach and the Theory of Reasoned Action were the theoretical bases of the persuasive communication. The principal finding was that nuclear knowledge and nuclear attitude each can be changed independently of the other. Although knowledge and attitudes are correlationally linked, this study shows no evidence of a cause‐effect relationship.
Development and application of a two‐tier diagnostic test measuring college biology students' understanding of diffusion and osmosis after a course of instruction
Authors: Odom Arthur Louis , Barrow Lloyd H. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis study involved the development and application of a two‐tier diagnostic test measuring college biology students' understanding of diffusion and osmosis after a course of instruction. The development procedure had three general steps: defining the content boundaries of the test, collecting information on students' misconceptions, and instrument development. Misconception data were collected from interviews and multiple‐choice questions with free response answers. The data were used to develop 12 two‐tier multiple choice items in which the first tier examined content knowledge and the second examined understanding of that knowledge. The conceptual knowledge examined was the particulate and random nature of matter, concentration and tonicity, the influence of life forces on diffusion and osmosis, membranes, kinetic energy of matter, the process of diffusion, and the process of osmosis. The diagnostic instrument was administered to 240 students (123 non‐biology majors and 117 biology majors) enrolled in a college freshman biology laboratory course. The students had completed a unit on diffusion and osmosis. The content taught was carefully defined by propositional knowledge statements, and was the same content that defined the content boundaries of the test. The split‐half reliability was .74. Difficulty indices ranged from 0.23 to 0.95, and discrimination indices ranged from 0.21 to 0.65. Each item was analyzed to determine student understanding of, and identify misconceptions about, diffusion and osmosis.
Predicting who will major in a science discipline: Expectancy–value theory as part of an ecological model for studying academic communities
Authors: Sullins Ellen S. , Hernandez Delia , Fuller Carol , Tashiro Jay Shiro 
Published: October 2006

AbstractResearch on factors that shape recruitment and retention in undergraduate science majors currently is highly fragmented and in need of an integrative research framework. Such a framework should incorporate analyses of the various levels of organization that characterize academic communities (i.e., the broad institutional level, the departmental level, and the student level), and should also provide ways to study the interactions occurring within and between these structural levels. We propose that academic communities are analogous to ecosystems, and that the research paradigms of modern community ecology can provide the necessary framework, as well as new and innovative approaches to a very complex area. This article also presents the results of a pilot study that demonstrates the promise of this approach at the student level. We administered a questionnaire based on expectancy‐value theory to undergraduates enrolled in introductory biology courses. Itself an integrative approach, expectancy‐value theory views achievement‐related behavior as a joint function of the person's expectancy of success in the behavior and the subjective value placed on such success. Our results indicated: (a) significant gender differences in the underlying factor structures of expectations and values related to the discipline of biology, (b) expectancy‐value factors significantly distinguished biology majors from nonmajors, and (c) expectancy‐value factors significantly predicted students' intent to enroll in future biology courses. We explore the expectancy‐value framework as an operationally integrative framework in our ecological model for studying academic communities, especially in the context of assessing the underrepresentation of women and minorities in the sciences. Future research directions as well as practical implications are also discussed.
Diagnosing and altering three aristotelian alternative conceptions in dynamics: Microcomputer simulations of scientific models
Authors: Weller Herman G. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis is a report on the investigation of a microcomputer‐based system for the diagnosis and remediation of three Aristotelian alternative conceptions of force and motion held by eighth‐grade physical science students. Diagnosis and posttesting were done with computer‐displayed, graphics‐based, multiple‐choice questions. The two remediation simulations were designed to present scientific idealizations and to be perceived by the student as anomalous to the three alternative conceptions. Structured interviews were employed at several points during the study to obtain indications of the conceptions of force and motion of students with different achievement rankings, as well as to determine the students' reactions to the computer pretest questions or the simulations. A student's possession of alternative conceptions was unrelated to whether the student was a strong or weak learner of science. Students who were currently studying dynamics in their classes exhibited a very different pattern of nonscientific answers on the computer diagnostic test than did students who had completed that topic. The completed students who were selected for possession of alternative conceptions were facilitated by the computer simulations in altering their naive conceptions to a significant degree.
Evolution and validation of a personal form of an instrument for assessing science laboratory classroom environments
Authors: Fraser Barry J. , Giddings Geoffrey J. , McRobbie Campbell J. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThe research reported in this article makes two distinctive contributions to the field of classroom environment research. First, because existing instruments are unsuitable for science laboratory classes, the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) was developed and validated. Second, a new Personal form of the SLEI (involving a student's perceptions of his or her own role within the class) was developed and validated in conjunction with the conventional Class form (involving a student's perceptions of the class as a whole), and its usefulness was investigated. The instrument was cross‐nationally fieldtested with 5,447 students in 269 senior high school and university classes in six countries, and cross‐validated with 1,594 senior high school students in 92 classes in Australia. Each SLEI scale exhibited satisfactory internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity, and factorial validity, and differentiated between the perceptions of students in different classes. A variety of applications with the new instrument furnished evidence about its usefulness and revealed that science laboratory classes are dominated by closed‐ended activities; mean scores obtained on the Class form were consistently somewhat more favorable than on the corresponding Personal form; females generally held more favorable perceptions than males, but these differences were somewhat larger for the Personal form than the Class form; associations existed between attitudinal outcomes and laboratory environment dimensions; and the Class and Personal forms of the SLEI each accounted for unique variance in student outcomes which was independent of that accounted for by the other form.
The effect of practical work on students' understanding of combustion
Authors: Watson Rod , Prieto Teresa , Dillon Justin S. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis paper describes a study which investigated 14 and 15 year old students' understanding of combustion in both England and Spain, and explores the effect of practical laboratory experience on students' understanding. The teaching and learning styles used with the students in the study were explored using questionnaires and interviews. The students' understanding of combustion was explored using a questionnaire. The responses of English and Spanish students are significantly different. The quality of the responses is explored in terms of the awareness of students of the involvement of gases in combustion, and it appears, however, that the more extensive use of practical work in English schools has had only a marginal effect on their understanding of combustion.
Tugboats and tennis games: Preservice conceptions of teaching and learning revealed through metaphors
Authors: Gurney Bruce F. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractBlack (1979) writes about the inextricable interrelationships among language, perception, knowledge, experience and metaphor. An extension of this, grounded in Wittgenstein's (1953) notion of the symbolic, experiential basis of “first language,” is the view that metaphors are windows into this primitive, personal framework. The purpose of this paper is to take an exploratory look at preservice teachers' metaphors of teaching and learning and to examine some components of student teachers' own intuitions in this area. In this study, a questionnaire was administered to one hundred and fifty‐one science education students at the beginning of their preservice training on which they were challenged to generate a personal metaphor for “teaching and learning.” Descriptive elements within the responses were differentiated and applied to the development of a classification scheme. Both the technique and the categorization are seen as useful devices for the identification of common conceptions about the teaching and learning process. The metaphors have been seen to communicate a richness of meaning which convey elements of mood, control, roles, attitudes and beliefs as they apply to teaching and learning and which, it is argued here, are grounded on more deeply rooted symbols than literal language. In the light of constructivist pedagogy, the elicitation of students' preconceptions is seen to be germane to the organization of learning experiences.
Teaching and learning distillation in chemistry laboratory courses
Authors: Van Keulen Hanno , Mulder Theo H. M. , Goedhart Martin J. , Verdonk Adri H. 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThis study investigates the problems chemistry majors have with learning distillation in traditional chemistry laboratory courses. Using an interpretive cyclic research design, we collected and interpreted data, mainly in the form of observation notes and transcriptions of the discourse that takes place during laboratory courses. It was found that students experience numerous problems; these are described and interpreted. We summarize students' problems in four categories: (a) students use an independent component conception; (b) they have insufficient understanding of the properties of vapor; (c) they regard distillation from a physical point of view; and (d) they do not have a practical understanding of thermodynamics. The main origin of these problems was found to lie with the traditional curriculum structure. Lecture courses and textbooks treat distillation in a generalized and decontextualized way, whereas decisions in actual distillations are always based on contextual features. It was found that textbooks and teachers often do not discriminate carefully and explicitly among five different contexts for distillation: organic synthesis, chemical analysis, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, and preparation of products. Students take the generalized concepts at face value and apply them to all distillations regardless of context. They cannot interpret their observations or make reasoned decisions based on the theoretical framework of a specific context.
Evaluating prospective elementary teachers' understanding of science and mathematics in a model preservice program
Authors: McDevitt Teresa M. , Troyer Rod , Ambrosio Anthony L. , Heikkinen Henry W. , Warren Erica 
Published: October 2006

AbstractTwo cohorts of students preparing to become elementary teachers participated in a model program in science and mathematics. These students were compared to other students taking similar courses on their conceptual understandings of science and mathematics, their investigative proficiencies, and their beliefs about effective methods of teaching these subjects. Instruments included newly developed tests of understanding, existing standardized achievement tests, and instruments devised for the evaluation to elicit conceptions of appropriate ways to teach science and mathematics to elementary children. Results from individual courses indicated that students participating in the model program developed more thorough understandings and more reform‐minded beliefs related to teaching science and mathematics. Issues associated with the assessment and evaluation of innovative programs in science and mathematics are discussed, and recommendations for teacher preparation are offered.
Cognitive conflict as a teaching strategy in solving chemistry problems: A dialectic–constructivist perspective
Authors: Niaz Mansoor 
Published: October 2006

AbstractThe main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of teaching experiments within a dialectic‐constructivist framework based on the following considerations: (a) Cognitive conflicts used in the teaching experiments must be based on problem‐solving strategies that students find relatively convincing: (b) after having generated a cognitive conflict, it is essential that the students be provided with an experience that could facilitate the resolution of the conflict; and (c) the teaching strategy developed is used by an interactive constructivist approach within an intact classroom. The study was based on two sections of freshman students who had registered for Chemistry I at the Universidad de Oriente, Venezuela. One of the sections was randomly designated as the control group and the other as the experimental group. To introduce cognitive conflict, the experimental group was exposed to two teaching experiments dealing with stoichiometry problems based on the concept of limiting reagent. Students in the control group were exposed to the same problems—however, without the cognitive conflict teaching experiments format. To evaluate the effect of the teaching experiments, both groups were evaluated on five different problems at different intervals during the semester, referred to as posttests. All posttests formed part of the regular evaluation of the students. Results obtained show the advantage of the experimental group on four of the posttests. It is concluded that the experimental treatment was effective in improving performance on the immediate posttests. It was observed that some students protect their core belief [see Lakatos, I. (1970). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge (pp. 91–196). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] in stoichiometry (establishing equivalent relations between different elements or compounds) by ignoring the conflicting data, just as conflicting (anomalous) data do not necessarily convince a scientist to abandon a particular theory.
A population study of Stenocranus minutus (Fab.) (Hemiptera: Delphacidae)
Authors: May Yin Yin 
Published: October 2006

SummaryThe seasonal and annual fluctuations in a population of the delphacid, Stenocranus minutus (Fab.) on Dactylis glomerata L. were studied from March 1968 to September 1970. The study involved the comparison of several sampling methods to estimate the egg, nymphal and adult numbers and an investigation into causes of mortality within each stage. A population budget was made for the years 1969 and 1970.
Temporal patterns of food‐availability and their effect on Tribolium populations
Authors: Wool David , Sverdlov Eliyahu 
Published: October 2006

Summary
The effects of two temporal food‐availability regimes were examined on populations of flour beetles (Tribolium): (1) Food given once only and never renewed; (2) Food added in fixed intervals.
In Case 1 there was a single peak in population size (and biomass) followed by a slow decline. The amount of biomass and numbers of adults produced were inversely related to the number of adult founders.
In Case 2, the production of adults and biomass was not proportional to the amount of food; thus food was not the limiting factor in the experimental populations. The effect of medium conditioning may have been important in limiting population growth.
Differences in productivity among the strains in Case 2 reflected their relative genetic variability following different mating systems in their past history.
A measure of the food cost of maintaining 1g of biomass for 1 day (MC) is suggested. All strains showed a rather uniform MC, approximately 0.1g flour/1g biomass/day, except in the growth phase when most of the biomass was larval biomass. During this phase, food is utilized not only for metabolism but also for building new tissues, and the energy requirement must be higher.
Extensions to Southwood and Jepson's graphical method of estimating numbers entering a stage for calculating mortality due to parasitism
Authors: Bellows T. S. , Van Driesche R. G. , Elkinton J. S. 
Published: October 2006

Summary
Seven methods of estimating percentage parasitism using graphical estimates of host or parasitoid recruitment are presented.
Biases affecting these percentage parasitism estimates arise from the effect of mortality on graphical estimates of numbers entering a stage. These biases result in underestimation of parasitism in some of the methods examined and overestimation in others.
The methods and their biases are discussed and illustrated with reference to data from four generations of Pieris rapae (L.) parasitized by Cotesia glomerata (L.).
The general impact of these biases are discussed with reference to situations where the methods might be applied.