In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the “Ten-Year General Polytechnical Secondary school” was a common school. In addition to this, “Abiturstufe” such as the “Extended Secondary School” of the two-year course was established as the courses for acquiring qualification for entering universities. Thus, the “Extended Secondary School” which provides about two-thirds of university students corresponded to the upper secondary school. In biology education in “Abiturstufe,” the revision of the course of study was carried out in order to supply the increasing social demands on the level of entrance qualification to university and take in various experiences of school practice up to the time. In this research, the author has examined how the teaching was revised by comparing the new and the old courses of study on biology education in the “Extended Secondary School.” Firstly, a survey on the revision of the courses of study was made mainly on biology education. Then, the author defined the reasons and subjects for the revision. The process of concretely revising them was also clarified. At this revision, the principle until the time was fundamentally followed in steps, acknowledged contents were preserved, and systematization and relevancy were attempted as making the most of the experiences up to the time. With the revision, a matter of great importance in the handling of biology teaching materials was clarified by the modification of selection, arrangement and time allotment of biology teaching materials. And then, there were consolidation of application in social practice, intension in the relation between biology education and other subjects, and concrete presentation of moral contents.

Generally, instructional media have been provided as communication devices between a teacher and a student. There is a general trend, however, that the implements in school science have been separated from instructional media. At the beginning of this study, the author has intended to examine whether the implements have the properties of instructional media or not. Subsequently, he has reconsidered several problems in the use of the implements in school science today. And we got some findings as follows: (1) The implements in school science are subsumed into instructional media. (2) In using the implements in school science today, we hold the following problems to be solved: (a) The differences between the rule - system of a teacher and that of a student prevent their successful communication. (b) Presently, the implements are not provided as communication devices, but as "extention of sensibility". (c) It is not necessary to have one implement per student. In school science, the reasonable number of implements per student has not been clarified. (3) Rather than a study with implements, a study on implements should be made.

According to cognitive science, the concept of schema represents one’s knowledge in the multi-dimensional aspects and provides the opportunities to evaluate children’s naive ideas in science. In this study the authors intended to analyze the children‘s schema organizations regarding the concept of “ion” by the White’s (White, R.T.) model, and refer to the meanings for the theory of science learning, too. The main points arising from this study are as follows: (1) Children’s problem solvings have diversities and have some relation to some factors such as their own propositions, strings, images, episodes and so on. (2) Children’s problem solvings are arbitrarily prescribed by their conceptions. (3) Children’s schema organizations are equal to the rising of “science”. For this reason this active model of learners should be considered to be just the basis for the theory of science learning.

In the previous study, the knowledge structure was represented as a production system by using LISP. The objective of this study was to clarify the method of representing the knowledge structure related to classifying rocks by using neural networks, because it was better to use neural networks for such cognition in which several factors were involved. In this research twenty junior high school students and one expert were re quested to point out the similarities and differences in visual character among the six igneous rocks. As a result, ten visual viewpoints to classify the rocks could be found and the individual model of knowledge structure could be formed by using neural networks. The character of visual viewpoints which each student and the expert have was clarified by the models. Furthermore individual unknown re actions related to classifying the rocks could be predicted by the models.

Too much focus has been placed on a body of scientific knowledge and information acquisition in the U.S. Therefore, the realms of the attitudinal domain, including feelings, values, and social processes, and the creativity domain, have been purposefully excluded from science programs. Most traditional science programs, in fact, discourage creativity and result in negative student attitudes. It is into this scene of science education that microcomputers have been introduced. The versatility of the computer provides the potential for major contributions to the quality of education in several realms. The utilization of computer technology, however, must be evaluated against the backdrop of the goals of education in general, and the role of science education in meeting these goals. Firstly, we need the evaluation of computer education, and it is suggested that computer literacy does not need much expertise other than a few weeks of intensive training for a job. Secondly, these days, very few papers delivered dealt with topics other than the more technical aspects of educational computing. Thirdly, from the viewpoint of cognitive development, “Formal Operations” are highly needed for the learning with computers. Large percentages of highschool and college-age people, however, are still in the level of “Concrete Operations”. It may be that we are rushing blindly to embrace a new type of instruction that has yet to prove itself. There are many questions about computers in education that have not been answered and many more that have not even been asked. We are calling for a thorough, critical evaluation of the role of computers in education before they are used by an entire generation of school children.

In this study, elementary school children in the 2nd through 6th grades were asked to select in a multiple choice format an electric current model for each of two mutually equivalent circuits being constructed from a battery, two wires, and either a bulb or a motor. The majority of the children applied a different model to each of these circuits, thus demonstrating marked situation-depencency in the selection of electric current models. Some questions were discussed which include: Why should the children’s conceptual models applied to simple circuits be limitted to only four kinds or so?: What brings about such situation-dependency in the application of electric current models?; What implications will the situation-dependency have for the research on the children's conception and learning of electricity?

This study chose students from the third year elementary to the third year junior high school as the subjects for a study into the understanding and impressions of heat and its transmission. The following are the results of the study: (1) The lower grade level students tend to understand heat as a thing having weight. (2) The higher grade level students confuse the meanings of convection and conduction and tend to think that heat transfers upward quickly. (3) In order to make the students understand the principle of conduction, one should not only use a horizontal material bar, but a slanted metal bar as well. (4) When a principle is not clearly understood, or there is not a firm grasp of the concept, even if the students think they have the idea, later as the students progress in their studies, there are some cases where the rate of their understanding decreases. (5) Presently there is no guideline for teaching about radiation and consequently there is a lack of understanding. There should be some organized and structured way set for teaching these principles. (6) The female students in the upper grade levels too perceived heat as a thing having weight.

As for the aims of newly revised elementary school science teaching in 1989, the following three points are emphasized: 1 To do more activities to approach nature directly. 2 To acquire the ability of problem solving. 3 To support the pupils’ scientific view and way of scientific thinking. Namely, the experience is directly valued and the pupils voluntarily have their own critical mind in their learning activity. Then, they apply a scientific view, the problem solving ability and the way of scientific thinking to the process of problem solving. Firstly, we attemped to develop the teaching material and the teaching tool which are able to turn the pupils’ problem consideration to natural phenomena. Secondly a device for the event presentation of natural phenomena by the teaching material and the teaching tool were done. Thirdly, a device for the unit compositions was attempted among the pupils’ activity through the unit of magnet. The activity by using a main teaching tool ‘the magnet ship’ was done. Next, the method of presenting a supplementary teaching tool of ‘the port’ which had the other magnet inside was used. After that, the pupils’ doubt about the study problem and their surprise rose. It was made possible for the pupils to generalize from one law about the magnet to the laws of all magnets in the activity flow of the study, that is, a meeting with the natural event → a critical mind or a problem consideration → activity for the solution→ generalization. In consideration of the content of the new course of study the teaching tools were developed which were able to make the pupils catch the phenomenon that the power of the magnet acts in separated space. We took up the playing activities a lot in the problem solving process of middle grade elementary school science. The pupils worked on the study as their own problem by being presented a supplementary teaching tool which was able to wake up the critical mind along the activity. As a consequence, the ability of the pupils’ problem solving was found to be improved.

It is effective to use the concept mapping as a learning tool for the scientific concept formation. To achieve this formation of concepts naturally in the laboratory activities in science classes, the authors developed the learning method with the combination of experiments and the concept mapping. This learning method was tried to the fifth graders and the sixth graders in science classes to form the concept of aqueous solution. The authors got some findings as follows: ① It is possible to use the learning method with the combination of experiments and concept mapping for the fifth graders and the sixth graders. Even the pupils who were unfamiliar with the concept mapping could achieve these activities. ② The concept maps constructed by the pupils during the laboratory activities became an appropriate record in science classes. ③ Concept mapping in laboratory activities is effective for enhancing concept formations.