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Iowa students and parents completed related attitude and belief questionnaires about school subjects. Grade K-3 students received simpler questionnaires than did Grade 4-6 students or parents. Among Grade 4 -6 children, girls perceived higher competence in reading than did boys, but boys perceived higher competence in physical science. All children perceived physical science competence lower than reading or math competence. Parents perceived boys as more competent in science. Girls like reading more than boys did; boys and girls did not differ in liking of science. Grade 4 -6 children also expected lower grades in and attached lower importance to physical science than to reading. Parents perceived science as more important for boys and expected higher performance of boys. Jobs related to math or science were seen as more male dominated. These results provided a more comprehensive picture of attitudes and beliefs about science in the elementary school than had existed and suggested that attitudinal gender differences related to physical science begin to develop by the earliest elementary school years. Policy implications are that intervention programs designed to promote gender equity should be extended to the early elementary school years and also should address parental attitudes. Additional implications for policy and research are discussed. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 719 -747, 1999 While much research on attitudes toward and beliefs about science has been conducted, relatively little of this research has (a) focused on elementary school students, (b) examined developmental trends, or (c) compared attitudes and beliefs toward science to attitudes and beliefs toward other school subject matters. To improve attitudes toward science, knowledge is needed about the current state of attitudes toward school subjects across grade levels for each gender. Haladyna and Shaughnessy (1982) called for more developmental research on attitudes. In addition, examining the relationship between parent and student attitudes provides a basis for understanding extrascholastic influences on the development of subject matter specific attitudes. This article focuses on the developmental pattern of students' attitudes and beliefs toward school subject matters during the elementary years and the relationship of student attitudes and parental attitudes. We focus on five attitudes and beliefs: (a) positive affect or liking of the subject matter, (b) perceived importance of the subject matter, (c) perceived competence in the subject mat-JOURNAL

The present study investigated relationships between gender, interest and experience in electricity, and conceptual change text manipulations on learning fundamental direct current concepts. Conceptual change text has been shown to lead to better conceptual understanding of electrical concepts than traditional didactic text, but previous research suggested that the effect interacted with the gender of the participants. We hypothesized that interest moderated this interaction. In this study, men and women who had higher or lower interest in electricity and greater or lessor experience with electricity read conceptual change or traditional text. When interest level, experience, and prior knowledge were not included in the analysis, both gender and text type produced significant main effects. When interest level, experience, and prior knowledge were included in the analysis, conceptual change text led to better understanding of electricity concepts than did the traditional text, and the effect of gender was eliminated. This finding supports the hypothesis that prior interest level, experience, and knowledge mediate apparent gender differences in learning about electricity. It suggests that conceptual change text manipulations are likely to be effective for both men and women. J Res Sci Teach 34: 107-123, 1997. During the past 15 years, the role of prior alternative conceptions or misconceptions in learning natural science has been explored extensively. In the science education context, the terms alternative conceptions and misconceptions refer to ideas that students have about natural phenomena that are inconsistent with scientific conceptions. Many terms have been used to identify such prior conceptions. Wandersee, Mintzes, and Novak (1994) presented an analysis of the subtle distinctions in the usages of these terms. In this article we adopt the term "misconception," because we believe the goal of effective science instruction is to encourage the student to construct an understanding that is generally consistent with accepted scientific theory. Accepted scientific theory is defined as understanding constructed by individuals interacting in the culture that defines the discipline, in this case, physical science. The goal of science education is to facilitate entry of the student into the knowledge and language culture of science. Our usage is consistent with the description of Wandersee et al. of the more nomothetic camp in the alternative conception literature.It is clear that students use preexisting conceptions constructed from reflection on previous JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING VOL. 34, NO. 2, PP. 107-123 (1997) experiences to reason about newly presented science concepts, and to make sense of their instructional science experiences (Driver & Easley, 1978; Zietsman & Hewson, 1986). Such preconceptions are often incorrect from a scientific viewpoint and can interfere with students' learning of science (Driver & Easley, 1978;Fredette & Clement, 1981;Helm & Novak, 1983). Some student m...

To reduce curricular fragmentation in science education, reform recommendations include using common, unifying themes such as scaling to enhance curricular coherence. This study involved 215 participants from five groups (grades 5, 7, 9, and 12, and doctoral students), who completed written assessments and card sort tasks related to their conceptions of size and scale, and then completed individual interviews. Results triangulated from the data sources revealed the boundaries between and characteristics of scale size ranges that are well distinguished from each other for each group. Results indicate that relative size information was more readily understood than exact size, and significant size landmarks were used to anchor this relational web of scales. The nature of past experiences situated along two dimensions—from visual to kinesthetic in one dimension, and wholistic to sequential in the other—were shown to be key to scale cognition development. Commonalities and differences between the groups are highlighted and discussed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 282–319, 2006

Learners enter the classroom with informal ideas (alternative conceptions) about scientific phenomena; these ideas affect how the corresponding scientific explanations are learned. In addition, students' epistemological beliefs concerning learning influence achievement. This study investigated the effects of a constructivist versus objectivist learning environment on college students' conceptual change, using a computer simulation of the human cardiovascular system as an instructional tool. This study also investigated the interaction between constructivist versus objectivist learning situations and the students' epistemological beliefs. The constructivist approach resulted in significantly greater conceptual change than the objectivist approach for 2 of 6 commonly held alternative conceptions; the other 4 of 6 areas showed no significant differences for treatment group. More important, however, the treatment interacted significantly with epistemological beliefs. Individuals with more advanced epistemological beliefs learned more with a constructivist treatment; individuals with less developmentally advanced beliefs learned more with an objectivist treatment. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 145-160, 1998. This study investigated the effects of constructivist versus objectivist computer simulation environments on students' conceptual change within the setting of a college human physiology class. This study also examined the potential interaction between student epistemological belief and type of simulation environment, with regard to the development of conceptual understanding. We will discuss the general nature of alternative conceptions with a special focus on the human cardiovascular system. A brief discussion of conditions necessary for conceptual change, including emerging findings on epistemological beliefs and instructional strategies for effecting conceptual change, follows. Finally, we present a conceptual change and constructivist approach to the use of computer simulations.A note follows about the use of the term constructivism. The view that students construct their knowledge from individual and/or interpersonal experiences and from reasoning about these experiences is called "constructivism." Cobb (1994) described two distinct but complementary constructivist perspectives concerning knowledge construction. The cognitive constructivist view emphasizes the unique way knowledge is configured and evolves within the individual learner. The sociocultural constructivist view emphasizes the development of shared JOURNAL

The rapid pace of development is bringing advanced technologies to the World Wide Web (WWW), and, as a result, schools have access to new tools for science investigations. In this exploratory study, we investigated how an educational experience organized around students' use of a WWWcontrollable atomic force microscope (AFM) influenced students' understandings of viruses. The context for the study was a weeklong unit on viruses for two high school biology classes which incorporated student use of the WWW controllable AFM. We also investigated how the haptic (involving kinesthetics and touch) experiences afforded by this tool might influence students' knowledge of viruses, microscopy, and nanometer scale. Fifty students from two high school biology classes participated in a series of instructional activities and pre-and postassessments (knowledge test, opinion questionnaire, and interviews). Results showed that students' understandings of microscale, virus morphology, and dimensionality changed as a result of the experiences. Students' conceptions moved from a two-dimensional textbook-like image of a virus to a three-dimensional image of an adenovirus. The results of this preliminary study suggest that the use of the technology as a tool for learning about morphology of materials too small to see may be beneficial. ß

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