The author intended to investigate how the upper secondary school students' desire to learn had varied throughout the year and why their desire to learn had been god or lost, for the desire is one of most important psychological factors in carrying out the activity of learning. For this purpose, he monthly investigated them by the way of ‘questionnaire'. The findings are as follows: (1) In view of the levels of their desire to learn in every school year, the first-year-student comparatively has maintained the higher level throughout the year as a new student. On the other hand the second-year-student has continued to be in the state of lower level throughout the year as the year of a slump which is the middle year of the upper secondary school days. But the third-year student comes to raise his desire again, which is keener than that of the first-year-student. (2) The variation of the individual students ‘desire to learn throughut the year can be classified into fifteen types, of which the most conspicuous type is "two or three valley type". It means that the students lose their desire two or three times in a year. The time when they lose it comes in June, about in October and November and then in February the next year. (3) Especially, the time when the desire is lost most rapidly comes between in April and in May. On the contrary the time when it is rapidly aroused is between in February and in March. (4) The desire to learn for science keeps lower level throughout the year than the desire for any other subject. (5) One of the most remarkable reasons why the students arouse their desire to learn is that the regular examination or the entrance examination to the university is drawing near. On the other hand, one of the most remarkable reasons why the students lose the desire is that the contents of the subject is too difficult to understand. The third-year-student have a tendency not to arouse the desire for studying the subjects that are unnecessary for the entrance examination.

The direction of the Twenty-fifth Congress of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) (1976) and the joint decree of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers "On Further Improving the Teaching and Upbringing of General Education School Pupils and Their Preparation for Labor"(1977) dealt with the significant shortcomings in the work of the teaching and upbringing of pupils which had occurred under the conditions of the universal compulsory secondary education. To eliminate such shortcomings and ensure the quality of education for all pupils, the decree set forth the reform of school syllabuses and one of the fundamental policies of the reform was to exclude superfluous information, stress the accessibility, inner continuity, and logical succession of the materials. On the other hand, in the third plenary session of the Academic Methodological Council (1975) it was admitted that the interdisciplinary ties, which had been necessary only for organizing the school syllabuses, should be carried out systematically and methodically in the teaching-learning activities in the classroom. The third plenary session also recommended several definite proposals to realize the interdisciplinary ties in the schools. In 1978 the draft of new school syllabuses was issued, in which the new section "Interdisciplinary ties" was included. This introduction of "Interdisciplinary ties" can be regarded as the result of the requirements of the decree in 1977 and the third plenary session in 1975. In other words, the interdisciplinary ties were introduced to improve the teaching and upbringing of pupils under the conditions of the universal compulsory secondary education.

The information through questionnaire as to the ability of the students in the training course for elementary school teacher to identify natural objects is reported. The subjects employed are the 90 students attending my lecture "Science in Elementary School" in Department of Education, Bukkyo University, Kyoto. The items of questionnaire are as follows : (1) The ability to identify the plants which appear in the science textbooks for elementary and lower secondary school. (2) The ability to identify the animals which appear in the science textbooks for elementary and lower secondary school. (3) The ability to identify the rocks and minerals which appear in the science textbooks for elementary and lower secondary school. (4) The ability to identify stars and constellations in watching the sky. (5) The experience and interest in cultivating plants. (6) The experience and interest in observing nature.

Observation is a basic science skill which makes use of all the sense organs of the body. This skill is very important in gathering information about the nature of all the things around us. Knowledge and understanding of the pupil's development in making accurate observations is of prime importance to teachers in the elementary and lower secondary levels. The authors conducted a study which involved pupils from the 4th grade to the 9th grade. The pupils were asked to observe two rocks, namely, quartz diorite and conglomeratic sandstone, and to write their observations. An analysis of the observations made by the pupils was done by the authors. The findings of this study are the following ; (1) Generally, the pupils ‘observing abilities changed from quantitative character to qualitative character keeping pace with the development of pupils. (2) The pupils do not use all their sense organs when observing. Collection of information about the rocks was done only by using two senses, the sense of touch and the sense of sight. (3) 65~75% of the pupils in the elementary level and 30~50% of the students in the lower secondary level involved in the study were hard up in giving observations. They gave interpretations instead of writing observations. Hence, the necessity of providing varied experiences on differentiating interpretation and observation to the pupils.

The convection phenomena has been for a long time taught as one of the ways of heat transmission in the 6th grade in the elementary school in Japan. Models showing the motion of water in the convection phenomena are found in many science textbooks but they can not be understood by theoretical and observational viewpoints. The authors wanted to find out the true motion of the water by convection by measuring the change and distribution of the water temperature with some thermocouples while heating the water in various vessels with various heat sources. Based on the results of the study, the authors arrived at the following conclusions. When water is heated, the water around the heat source rises and its volume expands, concequently, it's density reduces. The heated water goes up to the water surface and covers the water whole surface. As the water rises one after the other, the water which rose at first is pushed downward to the bottom of the vessel forming a layer. These processes are completely different from the models found in science textbooks. These processes can be observed well by coloring the rising water with Permanganic Potassium (KMnO4) set on the heat source. The authors also found that it is better to use a candle flame rather than alcohol lamp and bunsen burner flames as a heat source for observing the mot10n of the water in the convection phenomena.

In this study, we pointe:1 out some problems on the cotents of the structures of the flames in the science textbooks referring to the modern combustion theory. The abstracted problems on the structures of it were as follows : (1) the differences between the flame that were pre-mixed air on the teclu burner and the flames that were not pre-mixed air on it, candle flame etc. (2) the definition of the inner flames and the outer flames. (3) the detailed structure about the blue zone at the bottom of the flames of the candle, teclu burner non-pre-mixed air. As the results of the investigation of the above mentioned problems, it appeared that the misconstrued description on the structures of the flames had been introduced in the science textbook.

In the science education the direction is one of the most important concepts, and we can find many learning activities with relation to the concept in science textbooks. In U.S. A. projects (ESS, SAPA, MAPS, SCIS and so on), the learning activities on it have been established variously, too. Following the previous study, in this study the author intended to investigate the student's cognitive ability on the direction concept, which is a element of the spatial concept. Piaget’s ‘Three mountains task (1956)'suggested that it was necessary for cognizing the direction to locomote the viewpoint. According to Piaget's theory, the author uses locomoting the viewpoint, as the method the examine the attainment of cognizing it. The following findings were obtained: (1) The left-right direction is not sufficiently understood, and the locomoting of viewpoint is necessary to cognize this concept. (2) Through elementary and lower seこondary school students, the cognitive ability on the parallel concept is very poor. (3) Most students do not understand the compass direction, and confuse it with the up-down concept (4) The number of the students who understand fully the horizontality-perpendicularity concept, was about 50 % in 6th grade. In the wrong answers three types are recognized. (5) Few students understand the compass direction in the three dimensional space, and most subjects understand it as two dimensional direction.

Although "heat" is one of the everyday languages, scientifically it is a form of energy and has been organized after much complications in the history of science. Therefore, heat concept is so abstruct that it is hard to be recognized by the students. The authors investigated the image of heat in the students from 4th grade to 9th grade by using questionnaire on the two phases (A, B) as a basic study on the cognition of heat concept. (A) The free answer on the image of heat. (B) The multiple choise test on the concreat image of heat. The findings of the study are as follows. (1) Almost students in any grade have a tendency to recognize "heat is hot", "heat is warm". (2) Almost students in any grade fail to distinguish between heat and temperature. (3) Decreasing the grade, students have a tendency to recognize that hot object only has a heat. (4) 41% of students in the elementary school, 48% of students in the lower secondary school could image that heat had no shape and no color. (5) 73% of students in the elementary school, 47% of students in the lower secondary school recognize that the object's weight is relative to increasing temperature.