Recently, much attention is paid to STS (Science/Technology/Society) in science education. What on earth is STS, and how is research being made? In this study, this question was made clear, from the past to the present, in all fields, and from all educational levels. The literature was picked up related to STS from the ERIC database in America. From the information contained in the STS literature, the STS was analyzed in all respects. The results showed as follows: (1) Indeed the study of STS is related to society, but not so influenced by social studies or social sciences. (2) There are some institutions where the study of STS is being made actively, and there are some professional journals. (3) The study of STS was found even before the 1980s, and in the 1980s it got more and more popular, and around the 1980s the professional journals were published. It follows from those facts that STS is regarded as a new emphasis in teaching science.

A research questionnaire was administered to elementary school teachers to clarify the teachers’ interest and concern in nature and their educational problems in the renewed course of study. The results of this investigation were summarized into the following points. The male teachers have stronger interest and concern in nature than the female ones. The male teachers having strong interest in and concern for nature were found to be 60 percent and those having average interest and concern were found to be 36 percent, collectively, 40 percent of elementary school teachers had strong and 36 percent had average interest in and concern for nature. The more teaching experience the teachers had, the fewer problems they had in the renewed course of study, and the higher the pupils’ school grade was, the more problems the teachers had in the renewed course of study. Judging from the standpoint of the science educational region, the teachers had the most problems for the region of the earth and the space, and the second most for animals, but for plant, chemistry and physics the teachers had rather fewer problems. For the stars’ light, color and their locations which are taught in the sixth grade, more than 50 percent of teachers had problems in teaching this. As mentioned above, generally, the more teaching experience the teachers had, the fewer problems they had in the renewed course of study, but there were some great problems which did not decrease the ratio of whom had problems in teaching by the number of years of teaching experience.

We discuss the current configuration of science education by the secondary school teachers in the Toukai district and their outlook on the nature, on the basis of their replies submitted to our questionnaire. It is noted that they have no systematic outlook on the nature, although they have a mine of information on natural science and environmental problems. Their experimental education is not enough to make pupils familiar with nature. It is also pointed out that, nevertheless, they have an eagerness and a high potential for better education on the natural science at secondary schools. These results may emphasize the importance of education at colleges, especially for students who want to be teachers. That is to say, college teachers should make more efforts for organizing better lectures concerning “philosophy” on the nature and the environmental problems, which efforts would save the earth from the environmental crisis in the long run.

Since the 1960s, the natural environment was largely and suddenly changed in Japan. Hence, the educational circumstance in the school became one of today’s assignments to be reconsidered. Under this recognition, the information through questionary papers was obtained to make clear the present status of environmental trees in the school ground. Simultaneously, the environmental recognition in science education was questioned of the science education teachers in the elementary and the lower secondary schools in the Tottori Prefecture. The facts described below were made clear by the answered results. (1) The trees classified into the ornamental and garden plants are decoratively planted in most schools. (2) The works of the lopping and the ordering are mostly done by PTA and teachers in the elementary school, and those are mainly done by gardeners in the lower secondary school. (3) Most teachers of science education lessons make an attempt to teach materials of the trees planted in the school, and they plan to make pupils learn immediately from nature. (4) There is an administrative guidance by the Ministry of Education about the creation of environmental protection forests in schools. It was found, however, that the guidance became no reality in most schools.

The INRC group, which had been defined as the logical operations by J. Piaget, can be adopted as the model that explains “the relational concepts.” The model, however, is insufficient for interpreting the fact that many students cannot acquire these concepts. To clarify this problem, the authors have tried to analyze the students’ acquirement of the concept of the humidity with the INRC group adding the recent schema theories. The main points arising from this study are as follows: (1) Even if students are regarded as those who cannot acquire the relational concepts, they are problem solvers with their own logic. (2) In the problem solving processes, students have some characteristic ends and means, which are considerably dependent on their own knowledge such as the propositions, strings, images and episodes. (3) We need to treat students’ acquirement of the relational concepts based on how they apply their own knowledge in problem solving, because they cannot use the INRC group until they recognize that air coexists with water vapor.

We developed a diagnostic software, designed for investigating students’ understanding of animal classification. Employing this software, students’ understanding of this domain was examined at lower and upper secondary level. The main findings are as follows: (1) Subjects tend to classify animals by a single conspicuous attribute. (2) As to the frequencies of attributes used in classifying, as the grade level proceeds, the biological one increased and the common one dropped. (3) Students at upper secondary school are still apt to use common attributes in final discrimination of each animal. (4) Students’ concept of animal is highly restricted, and different from the biologically accepted one. (5) It appears to be difficult for the subjects to recognize the relationship of each taxon in the taxonomic system.

The investigation into the recognition of science education of men and women that learned in their school age are performed. The elder people have more experience of work in the outdoor field than younger people. And they recognize that the Science, which they learned in their school age, is interesting and useful in their daily life. These results show the necessity of learning with experience of work in the outdoor field in order to make the students take an interest in the global environment. Another research study of the understanding on natural environment by young people was performed using the image map type questionnaire. The understanding by young people is discussed concerning the science education in lower secondary school and upper secondary school. As a result of this research the lack of understanding on natural environment by young people is shown. It is thought that the poor experience in the field work on animals, plants, the lay of the land, and so on in their school age causes them to have poor understanding. From both results of these research studies it is shown to be very important for the students to learn science with experience in the natural environment in order to make science understanding useful to their life.

The authours have studied the effectiveness of the concept mapping as a learning tool. In order to give the chances to construct the knowledge about “the nature of the aqueous solution” to the sixth graders, the authours introduced the concept mapping in the lessons. To evaluate the effectiveness, the authors considered “the system of concepts” and “the number of concept maps.” As a result, we found the effectiveness of the concept mapping in the treatment group as follows: (1) Analyzing “the system of concepts,” we found that more pupils recalled and acquired the knowledge well in the treatment group than in the control group. (2) Analyzing “the number of concept maps,” we found that more pupils got “the integrative reconciliation” in the treatment group than in the control group. On the other hand, we found the problems as follows: (1) The necessity for developing learning methods and evaluating methods of concept maps with less hierarchy and few cross links which are typical in sixth graders. (2) The necessity for developing other evaluating methods of the post test which take account of the pupils’ mastery of concept mapping.