This study investigated the proportional reasoning abilities of 35 college science students. Using a projection of shadows problem, proportional reasoning was assessed under one of two experimental conditions corresponding to the type of information presented: (a) relevant only, or (b) relevant and irrelevant. Subjects were also measured on the cognitive style of field independence. Results showed that subjects in the relevant only condition performed significantly better than those in the relevant-irrelevant condition. Degree of field independence was related to performance only in the relevant-irrelevant condition. These results indicated an interaction between type of information presented in a task and cognitive style.
Recent national commission reports have discussed a new era for science education. Unlike the sciences of the 1950s and 1960s, this new era has raised some provocative questions concerning science education for the future. The science movements of the post-sputnik period stressed science for the elite, more science and mathematics for the college-bound student, developing a corps of the very best engineers and scientists who could take us to the moon and let us assume the leadership in the international scientific enterprise. It was a time whose purpose was to get the most able students from our high schools into the calculus and physics courses at universities and colleges as quickly as possible. The recent report of the National Science Board's Commission on Precollege Education in Mathematics, Science, and Technology represents a radical departure from the movements of the 50s and 60s. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the implications of their recommendations for the future of science education.
There is abundant evidence to support the belief that much of the material "taught" in methods courses does not carry over to actual teaching. In an extensive review of the literature, Haberman (1965) found that many teacher education programs lack appropriateness. That is, they do not adequately bridge the gap between preparation and practice. This lack of preparation for the "real world" was also reported by Schneiweiss and David (1967) (1965) points out that the large number of research studies in science and mathematics education have been devoted to very specific attempts to determine whether the theory and practice of pre-service training can carry over into actual teaching of a first year teacher.The use of "degree of transfer" as an index of pre-service training success may be the shortcoming of present teacher training methods courses. The success of a beginning teacher may depend upon a variety of factors that can't be controlled in the contrived environment of pre-service experiences, including student teaching. For example, the success of a beginning teacher may be due to her personal adaptability to her students, her principal, the school setting, and the role expectations she must face in her first teaching assignment, rather than to any similarity between her pre-service training and her teaching assignment.The prospective teacher has, by the time she enters the classroom, developed a way of viewing herself. Now, as a first year teacher, she is faced with an entirely different context within which she must see herself. This is a new and different world, a new setting, in which she has little or no assurances that her past perceptions of herself will remain constant. At the same time, it can be assumed that the teacher's self-perceptions will also undergo radical change.
707
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.