The actual circumstances of students who wish to become a science teacher are as follows. (1) As the school year advances from an elementary school to a lower secondary and an upper secondary one, students are apt to have less and less experience of searching by themselves. (2) They have a good knowledge of science, but most of their knowledge is fragmentary for carrying out studies. (3) They have not acquired skills that are fundamental and standard for observation or experiments. Therefore, they have to be trained to develop the ability which is able to respond properly to various learning activities of pupils. For the purpose, a training curriculum using litmus dye was made. The basic guide lines of the curriculum are as follows. (1) They have to have training in the standard operation by using fundamental instruments and apparatus. (2). They have to have training in the "process of scientific researches" by using "scientific methods."

The Elementary School attached to Hiroshima Higher Normal School implemented for a period of 4 years, 1950-1954, a program known as the Seikatsu-ka (Life Study). This research attempted to present the special characteristics of the program. The findings were summarized as follows: 1) During the early part of the 1950's, the movement known as the General Education on Life Experience in 'the United States greatly affected the inclusion of the unit on Life Study in the core curriculum. Due to the inclusion of the said unit in the core curriculum, the Elementary School attached to the Hiroshima Higher Normal School has developed a program related to Life Study based on the viewpoint of the curriculum and instruction subject areas. The said program has, therefore, been designed incorporating science, social studies, and handicraft subjects for the first two years of the elementary school. 2) The Seikatsu-ka (Life Study), being a subject area which combines together the various concepts in science, social studies, and handicraft subjects, has been used as methodology for enhancing learning capability of the pupils in the lower grades of elementary school. The subject area resembles a container which amalgamated all the said three subject areas. 3) As Seikatsu-ka (Life Study) was implemented at the Elementary School attached to Hiroshima Higher Normal School, emphasis was placed not only on the integrated scope combining science, social studies, and handicraft, but also on the logical sequence where pupils pursue and deepen their learning in each subject as they move toward the upper grades. Such special consideration was given in Seikatsu-ka (Life Study).

Without investigating man, one cannot examine nature to which man has a certain relationship of his own; naturally, an answer to the investigation solely depends on the culture man has acquired. According to that answer, concepts of nature should be given. Consequently, the relationship accepted in Japan between nature and man must differ from what is believed in the Western world, where the concepts of nature were mainly formed according to the Christian faith. In this report, from the above point of view, differences in the concepts are investigated between "nature" and "shizen" which Japanese people have regarded as an equivalent to nature in science education. Since the concepts of shizen originated from Taoism, they do not necessarily coincide with those of nature; in some cases, they are opposed to each other. For example, shizen is regarded as the supreme reality in the Orient while nature as one of many objects in man's consideration. Science education in Japan has disregarded this difference. It is not yet referred to in the present course of study authorized by the Ministry of Education. During the period of modernization in Japan, that disregard has made it possible for Japanese people to acquire an awareness of natural science through science education; in return, our traditional relationship has been disordered. In fact, we have paid insufficient attention to the difference. Since Japan has grown to be influential as an advanced technological society, we have to explain the difference to the people of foreign countries. Unless we ourselves try to explain this distinction, we can neither add original and valuable contributions to the world community nor maintain our own identity in it.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the structure of the integrated-subject curriculum designed for elementary schools (grades 1 and 2) in Japan. The different school curricula were gathered from 54 schools which administered teaching-learning activities. The curriculum structure was analyzed with the ISM (Interpretive Structure Modeling) method derived from graph theory in the field of modern mathematics. In the ISM method, firstly the elements which made up the structure were abstracted from learning objectives and activities within the curriculum, then after logically or causally locating the relationships between the elements presented by vertices the structural relationships of all the elements were visually located on an easily interpreted hierarchical network graph-actually a type of directed graph (digraph). Hierarchical digraph can show clearly the structural features of the teaching-learning process in the integrated-subject curriculum as shown in the following. (1) The teaching-learning process can be classified into 2 types, a cycle-graph and a tree-graph structure in the theory. In the cycle-graph structure, the learning activities commonly have the tendency to be repeated with trial and error as an inquiring process. In the tree-graph structure, the learning activities and contents followed a stream such as A (environment) ➔B (experience) ➔C (expression and thinking). There was also the stream pattern within the cycle-graph structure. (2) The play as activities can be found at the start for motivation to learning, in the course of learning to support the activities, and also at the ending part of learning which enables thinking to take shape.

To increase the abilities of the pupil's scientific thinking when he/she meets a new problem, it is very important for us to know the ability of the pupil to formulate hypotheses. It is thought that scientific thinking is a main logical operation in problem solving. Formulating a hypothesis is one of process skills in problem solving. Recently, APU (Assessment of Performance Unit) in UK developed some ways of assessing abilities in this field based on pupils' scientific activities. APU is also trying to find abilities of students in the problem solving. In order to find a pupil's ability in formulating hypotheses in his/her problem solving, the authors used one of the problems developed in The APU Project. The authors also developed some analyzing methods for pupils' records. The assessment was given by the authors using a pen and paper test to 246 pupils of 4th, 5th and 6th grades in three elementary schools. The test took about 10 minutes. The findings are as follows: 1. The authors were able to measure the increasing explanations including information and inference in formulating hypotheses as pupils advance in grade. 2. Viewpoints in formulating hypotheses are mainly artificial explanations in 4th grade, characteristics of objects and artificial explanations in 5th grade, and more. scientific explanations in 6th grade. 3. Applications of concepts taken from pupils' daily life experiences decrease, whilst applications of concepts taken from school life experiences increase as they advance in grade. 4. The abilities of pupils in formulating hypotheses by the number of hypotheses become greater from 4th grade to 6th grade as they advance in grade. 5. In formulating hypotheses, authors found that the number of pupils having various ideas decreases and viewpoints are limited as they advance in grade.

In Japan, we have many disasters every year, and the losses because of them are enormous in total. Although, people don't pay much attention to disasters, sometimes they are quite ignorant condition about disasters. Science as one of the school subjects is responsible for the preparations for disasters, but in recent years, nothing about disasters is taught in science. We suspect such tendencies are on account of too much stressing of the inquiry process and technique, the selection and reorganization of teaching subjects in science education. We think these tendencies are the serious faults in today's science education. In rapid and high grade urbanizations, the fears of big disasters are growing day by day. In such situations, these faults are serious problems. So, we planned to research students' understanding about disasters in lower secondary school. In this research, we found the facts that the concerns about disasters are different according to the kind of disasters, and even the students who have serious concerns haven't enough understanding about disasters. And almost no students have any preparations for disasters.

"Science" as a subject does not exist at the elementary school level (1-4) in both countries. However, at the elementary school level, the subjects taught are "Heimatkunde" in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and "Sachunterricht" in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The major characteristics as well as the major similarities of elementary school science in both countries are summarized as follows: (1) "Heimatkunde" in the GDR The socialistic idea seems to be reflected clearly in the goals and objectives of learning as well as in the contents available in areas related to science. (2) "Sachunterricht" in the FRG The tradition of education developed during the Weimar Republic era seems to have continuously existed as depicted in terms of the teaching methodology used in areas related to science. (3) Science teaching at the elementary level in both countries Similarities of science teaching in the two countries also can be seen in terms of content construction done in the integrated manner, topics selected as contents, and predominant amount of contents related to biological science. Science education at the elementary school level in each country has been developed and changed under the influence of the ideology and/or tradition existing in the. society. However, science education in both countries shared common educational components which have continuously existed even at present since the Weimar Republic era, when both countries had not yet been separated.

It has been dealt with in textbooks of lower secondary school that the quantity of a reaction product is affected both by concentration and volume of the reagent solutions. This subject, which is intended for students to learn basic concepts of stoichiometry by their own experiments, was investigated from a quantitative viewpoint to give some essential information as follows. ⅰ) When the reaction yielding barium sulfate is used for this purpose, sedimentation of the precipitate usually takes more than 50 min, so that its amount can hardly be estimated by its volume in an ordinary school hour. ⅱ) When the formation of iron (Ⅲ) hydroxide is in the case, its volume depends not only on its quantity but also on the volume of the reaction mixture. ⅲ) Sedimentation of iron (Ⅲ) hydroxide is accelerated by the addition of some cationic polymer flocculants, among which medium cationic ones (eg. OX-505) are specially effective in evaluating the amount of precipitate by its volume. Moreover, teachers' opinions on this subject were examined by the questionnaire in lower secondary schools in Saga prefecture, and were analyzed in reference to the experimental facts.