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This study investigated the impact of 'assessment for learning' on learner performance in Life Science. Simple random sampling was used to select four schools from the King Cetshwayo District of KwaZulu Natal Province, South Africa, to participate in the study. A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest comparison group design was used, involving four schools -two forming the 'treatment condition' while the other two served as the 'comparison group'. Altogether, 160 grade eleven learners participated in the study. Two teachers were trained to use assessment for learning (AfL) as an instructional approach, while the two teachers of the comparison group used their usual instructional approaches. Data were analysed using SPSS (V23) and the statistical technique used was the 2-factor ANOVA with repeated measures. The result revealed that learners following an AfL instructional approach performed statistically higher that those following normal classroom instruction. This result is discussed, and recommendations made in respect of both classroom practice and further research. The findings of this study had implications for policy, further research as well as instructional and assessment approaches to be used in the teaching of Life Science in the South African education system.

Information and Communication Technology has changed the way of learning and sharing the knowledge in the education sector. Students prefer to participate and learn in web based environment. But they can be benefitted in this environment only if they have internet self-efficacy. The objective of this paper is to construct an "Internet Self-efficacy Scale" which can be used to determine the internet related ability and skills of secondary school students. The internet self-efficacy scale was administered to 350 students studying in ninth and tenth grades. Initially a preliminary draft of scale comprising 51 statements was constructed. After review and evaluation of statements by the experts, statements were reduced to 33. The 17 statements were retained in the final draft of the scale. The results of test-retest reliability indicate that the scale is reliable with reliability coefficient 0.89. Content validity was calculated and the scale developed was found to be valid.

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The incidence and prevalence of alternative conceptions in science have been reported by a number of researchers. This article reports findings of a study involving the development and implementation of two intervention programmes to address alternative conceptions related to interference and diffraction of waves among 133 first year university physics students. The two interventions were (1) a learner-centred approach based on the principles of outcomesbased education (OBE), and (2) a teacher-centred approach in the form of a traditional lecture, characterised by frontal dissemination of information while students passively listened and took notes. A total of nine alternative conceptions had earlier been identified in the pilot part of the study. In determining the effectiveness of the interventions, a pre-test/post-test comparison group design was followed. The results revealed statistically significant gains between the preand post-test scores for both the OBE and traditional lecture groups (p < 0.05). Qualitative data showed that most of the pre-existing alternative conceptions appeared to have been alleviated, although not completely overcome, by both interventions. There was no statistically significant difference between the results of the OBE and traditional lecture interventions. The implications of these findings are discussed, and recommendations are made for effective teaching and learning, as well as for further research.