“The river” has been treated as one of the traditional and important teaching materials in Japanese schools since the Meiji era. However, it is often said that “the river” as a teaching material does not work so well in class teaching. What is the reason for this? Japanese people in general tend to think that gravels and sands in river bed sediments are more rounded as they go farther down the river. This is one piece of our common knowledge. But when the learners actually observe the river bed, they will discover that the above-mentioned “common knowledge” is not correct. The features of Japanese rivers in comparison with continental rivers are summarized as follows: river length is short, the speed of running fluid is rapid and specific discharge is very large. From such viewpoints, this article discusses the river bed gravels of the “Hill RIVER”, which runs through granitic rock areas. The rezults of this study are as follows. (1) The roundness grades and sphericity grades of gravels do not increase simply from the upper streams to lower streams. The most important factors in changing the gravel’s form are the basic structures of joint system, shear plane etc. (2) The river bed gravels of Mesozoic era volcanics and basalt have some specific features and these are found in some limited areas. In such a case, it is easy to investigate the changes of gravel form. (3) The form grades of granitic gravels are very complicated by a varieties of factors such as grain size, texture, rock forming minerals and structure. The river bed sands of granitic rocks hold the key to our investigation.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental change of the concern and interest in animals of junior high school and high school students. In this study, the 4-point scale test was administered to 321 subjects, who were asked to evaluate the strength of their concern and interest in seven types of animals, e.g. insects, fowls and mamals. The result suggested that the students’ concern and interest in animals decreased as they grew older and that boys were generally much more interested in animals than girls were.

The purpose of the study was to demonstrate the correlation between experimental abilities and basic knowledge. The subjects in the study were junior high school students. In “the Electric Current” unit four different tests were given to each student. The four tests given were; (1) a circuit completion test in which the testees were not shown a circuit diagram which provided a hint to the circuit completion; (2) the same test as (1) but this time the testees were shown a complete circuit diagram; (3) a basic test in which each component was tested; and (4) a written skills test which tested the wiring, the circuit diagram, meter reading, etc. The results of this investigation revealed the following points: There is a close correlation between experimental abilities and written skills. It is difficult to say however that the students who are superior in written skills can always complete the assembly of an electric circuit correctly and efficiently. There were many students who learned how to assemble an electric circuit through experimentation itself. In fact, the evaluation of experimental abilities is better than that of written skills. Therefore, a performance test is indispensable to evaluate experimental abilities for circuit completion.

In order to develop a laboratory exercise suitable for 6th grade pupils of elementary schools, the Cookson and Price method (S. S. R. 64, 84-87, 1982), in which the photosynthetic rate is measured through the rate of leaf discs floating by means of accumulation of oxygen produced by their own photosynthesis, was re-examined. Using leaves of Elodea densa instead of leaf discs of terrestrial plants as in the Cookson and Price method, the time to exhaust the air from the leaf discs in order to immerse them can be omitted. More than half of the Elodea leaves used can float in distilled water (DW), which was aerated previously with expiratory air, when they are illuminated. But they cannot float at all in DW in which the CO₂ concentration has been equilibrated to the air. 1/ET₅₀ value, which is the reciprocal of the time required for half of the leaves used in the experiment to float, can be used as a relative photosynthetic rate. Spontaneous leaf floating was observed after a sudden rise in water temperature. Keeping the leaves at the experimental temperature for at least one hour before the experiment and keeping the water temperature constant throughout the experiment can help prevent spontaneous leaf floating. To shorten the time in which at least half of the leaves begin to float, some appropriate light and temperature conditions are necessary. The light intensity should be higher than 10klx and the temperature should be kept within the range from 25℃ to 35℃. From this experiment, pupils can notice that their expiratory air stimulates the photosynthesis of water plants.

To make clear the relation between the perception of shapes of microorganisms and the verbed report of them to lower secondary school students, the following examinations were carried out on 728 students in Ibaragi prefecture. The underwater microorganisms used in this examination were Sprogyra, Scenedesums Pediastrum, Cyclops, Paramecium, Clostgerium and Daphnia. In the primary examination the degree of perception of these microorganisms was examined through the student’s verbal report. In the secondary examination the degree of perception of these microorganisms were examined through the student’s drawing by their microorganisms were examined through the student’s drawing by their memories. As results, the following facts were ascertained: 1) Through the examination on the verbed report the degree of perception of illustrated images could not be surveyed. 2) The students’ image of a microbe was mainly composed of its outer shape and they lacked the awareness of its outside form and inside form. 3) The degree of student's perception of the image of microbes went down at the time of lower secondary school, especially it was remarkable at the period through from the tenth grade to the eleventh grade.

Recent studies in ACM focusing on children’s misconceptions, preconceptions, alternative frameworks seem to assume that children’s untutored ideas can be understood as some form of primitive or unsophistcated science. The Hawkins common sense theory reveals that there is an important analogy between scientific theories and children’s ways of understanding. We clarified that the pupils paradigms of ideas were best construed by his theory. According to Hawkins’ theory, children’s ideas are neither primitive nor unsophisticated science but common sense. The stock of understandings picked up gradually from earliest childhood is referred to as common sense. Common sense consists of concepts, beliefs and values that people share and it provides a basic view of the world, of their position in the world and of how they ought to act. Children’s conceptual framework is a theory which carves up experience in ways which differ from scientific framework.

In this study, the present authors intend to categoraize Japanese children’s rule systems used for international understanding, since this kind of study has not been investigated yet. This study tries (1) to identify phases where Japanese children interpret the gap between their culture and that of foreign children, (2) to categorize Japanese children’s rule systems used for international understanding, by means of mental simulation, and (3) to discuss the teaching of international understanding in the Japanese school science education. The authors have made some findings: (1) Japanese children have four phases to understand the gap between their culture and that of foreing children. Those are the phases to distinguish true from false, to examine the cause of misunderstanding, to distinguish good from bad, and to intend to remove misunderstanding. (2) In addition to the rule systems derived from natural science, various rule systems of Japanese children are used for international understanding. (3) To advance Japanese children's international understanding, the instruction and the curriculum of Japanese school science have several problems to be solved.

1. Effects of light or air temperature changes on the opening-closing leaf-movements of the clover Trifolium repens were investigated experimentally as a subject matter for biology education, and the following results were obtained. 1) After potted plants were moved from an outdoor natural condition to an indoor constant dark condition or to an indoor constant light condition (5,000lx), no opening-closing movements during the day were observed; though their nyctinastic movement was still observed, that is, their leaves closed during the night. 2) In the sunshine, the leaves of the plants in the wild state began to open when a shade was set up over them, while they began to close again when the shade was removed. 3) In the indoor experiments, the leaves of potted plants began to close when air temperature was raised higher than 45℃, while they began to open when it was lowered below that temperature. 2. The conclusions of this study are as follows: 1) The above experiments disclosed that in the case of Trifohum repens, light and temperature surely cause the daytime opening-closing movements of the leaves. 2) These experiments are also suitable as a subject matter to be elaborated for school biology from the primary level to the secondary level.

This study was an investigation of the basic experimental skills of the university students who had taken a physics course. First, their present skills were expressed in figures. In order to estimate the achievement of their papers, 10 items were selected and each of the items was graded according to a certain criterion. When their papers fulfilled a certain requirement, one point was given to each item on the check list, with ten points being full marks. The assigned experiments were on “Measurements of the index of refraction of light by glass and water.” The students handed in the papers on the experiments. The average mark of the first papers was 2.9/10. In order to improve this bad situation, the following method was adopted. After the students handed in the papers on the first experiment, a few words of advice were given, and the same kind of experiment was assigned again. Then the average mark of the papers on the second experiment jumped up to 7.0/10. From the results of the above investigations, it can be concluded as follows: It may be effective for less-skilled students to make experiments twice. The first experiment should be simpler, and after that with some detailed explanations given beforehand the second one should be more advanced.

The purpose of this study was to determine the essential structure of JPS (Introductory Physical Science) and some particulars that effected the making of the fifth edition. In this study, the structure of the textbook was analyzed by using the ISM method for four structural levels i.e. the whole-book level, the chapter-sequence level, the chapter level and the section level. The hierarchical structure was described through the use of graphs. The essential structure was found through the study of IPS to have the following characteristics: 1. On the whole-book level, there were three blocks within the subgraph. These were the “Definition of Pure Substances”. “Formation of the Atomic Model of Matter” and “Expansion of the Atomic Model”. The 8th chapter played the most important role in the formation of this structure. 2. In the subgraph form of the chapters from the 2nd to the 5th, “Mixtures and Pure Substances” played a key role in the formation of a vertex, which had been the same as “The Atomic Model of Matter” in the subgraph form of the chapters from the 6th to the 8th. In a portion after the 9th chapter, it was observable that the vertices seemingly formed out from the latter and then showed a spreading pattern. 3. There was no fixed form in the structural graphs within the chapter level. The graph structure depended on the contents of each chapter. 4. The structural graph of a section which also included an experiment seemingly showed a tendency of projecting several fixed forms. In this case, the items on “Question” played an important role. The particulars found were as shown below: 1. On the whole-book level, the particulars were classified into the insertion of two chapters concerning “Charge”, the deletion of one chapter concerning “Heat”, the adoption of selective learning course and the changing of the treatment for “Radioactive Elements”. 2. On the chapter-sequence level, the particulars were classified into the insertion of the contents of “The Mole” and “Concentration (g/100cm³)”. 3. On the chapter level, the factors were classified into the insertion of the sections concerning the application to social life and industrial technology, the measurement and calculation and the new materials, and into the deletion of the sections connected with another section in a distant chapter and with the section on “Bead” as a unit of “Mass”. 4. On the section level, which also included an experiment, the factors were classified into the emphasis of the function of “Question” and the safety control.