Under the curriculum of new course of study (2008) the learning on vascular system in junior high school becomes more significant. The students are expected to learn the vascular system through inquiry. For guiding students’ inquiry I investigated the vascular bundle of angiosperm stems using the polychromatic staining method by toluidine blue O and developed some teaching materials and method. The basic investigation on vascular bundle of plants in surroundings showed that the metachromasia of toluidine blue O was observed in the 80 % of 63 angiosperms species. In such species the xylem and the phloem could be differentiated easily by color. The xylem was stained blue or greenish blue while the phloem was stained reddish or bluish purple. Some species such as Lamium amplexicaule, Cyperus cyperoides, Mirabilis jalapa showed the suitable morphological feature of vascular system to study the patterns and diversity of plants. The developed teaching materials and method for inquiry are as follows: (1) Work sheets guiding observation of vascular system stained by toluidine blue O; (2) Photographic plates and information photo cards for comparative observation or the activity of classification of vascular system; (3) Work sheets and photographic plate on vascular system of climbing plants for relating the structure of stem to the adaptation in the environment.

This study investigates how RTTC biology lecturers acquire the inquiry-based learning in STEPSAM2 at Cambodia. We obtained the following results by the training of STEPSAM2 in September at 2010.

– The lecturers try to have the image of inquiry-based learning in biology lesson.

– They can design the lesson plan by the format of inquiry-based learning.

– They do not recognize the importance of Jishouteiji and Key Question well.

– They cannot analyze the experimental results of students by the viewpoints of inquiry.

Japanese killifish are commonly used in elementary school science especially as teaching material for embryonic development. However, some problems in the observation of embryos have been reported by previous researches. Due to small numbers, children typically have difficulty in observations of the embryos. It is also difficult for them to distinguish and understand the morphological change in the embryos due to the presence of attaching filaments on the surface of egg membrane and oil droplets in the egg cytoplasm that occur in embryo. We have developed and tested teaching materials that provide students with opportunity to observe embryonic development in the fish, Danio rerio.As a result of our experimentations, we have shown that Danio rerio has merits for classroom studies of embryology. Eggs can be easily spawned by artificial methods, and several hundreds of eggs will be produced. Development from eggs to juvenile fish will only take two or three days and students will easily be able to observe changes in the embryo to include the early stage. Through classroom observations, we found that children were very interested in Danio rerio and they could easily observe their entire embryonic development. Increasing of student interest in fish embryonic development was demonstrated.