Volume 101 (3), March 2001

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Table of Contents

Abstracts

Table of Contents

Abstracts

Using a Practical Context to Encourage Conceptual Change: An Instructional Sequence in Bicycle Science

Joseph A. Taylor
The Pennsylvania State University


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        The grounding of science instruction in practical applications has been strongly emphasized in the science education literature. The notion of concept status change allows one to view the importance of practical applications from a learning theory perspective. This article describes an instructional sequence in which a bicycle context was used to increase the status of appropriate concepts of work and simple machines. The instructional sequence was pilot tested in an applied physics course for elementary education majors. Implications are made for conceptual change pedagogy and for curriculum design.
 
 
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The Measurement of Time: Childrenâs Construction of Transitivity, Unit Iteration, and Conservation of Speed

Kathy Long, University of California
Constance Kamii, University of Alabama  at Birmingham


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        One hundred twenty children in kindergarten and grades 2, 4, and 6 were individually interviewed with five Piagetian tasks to determine the grade level at which most have constructed transitive reasoning, unit iteration, and the conservation of speed. The responses were categorized as ãsuccessful,ä ãunsuccessful,ä or ãtransitional.ä By combining the ãsuccessfulä and ãtransitionalä categories, it was found that the children reasoned transitively by second grade (70.0%) and demonstrated unit iteration and conservation of speed by sixth grade (70.0% and 83.3%, respectively). It was concluded that the construction of the logic necessary to make sense of the measurement of time is generally not complete before sixth grade.
 

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Using Analogies to Improve Elementary School Studentsâ Inferential Reasoning About Scientific Concepts

Karen L. Yanowitz
Arkansas State University


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        Various scientific concepts were taught to students in the third through sixth grades. Some children were taught the concepts using instructional analogies. Each analogy explicitly compared the science concept to a more familiar topic. Other children received expository texts not containing analogies. Students were asked to recall the texts and to answer inference questions about the science concepts. Fourth- and sixth-grade students read the texts on their own in Experiment 1. Students who read the analogical text showed higher levels of performance on inference questions than students who received the non-analogical texts. In Experiment 2, texts were read aloud to third- and fifth-grade students. The analogical texts were read once, and the nonanalogical texts were read twice to equate the number of times students were exposed to the general principles governing the domains. As in Experiment 1, students who received the analogical texts demonstrated better inferential reasoning than students who received the non-analogical texts.

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The Role of Teacher Stance When Infusing Inquiry Questioning Into Middle School Science Classrooms

Ann Haley MacKenzie
Miami University


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        The purpose of this study was to describe how a teacherâs stance of wonder, curiosity, and exploration during the use of hypothetical inquiry situations served as a way for the teacher to address her goals for students to be more vocal members of the learning community; to encourage critical and creative thinking in the students; to provide them with meaningful, context-rich opportunities for synthesizing personal past experience with ongoing classroom instruction; to enhance socialization skills in the middle school environment; and to provide an improvisational atmosphere for both learning and teaching.

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