The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of instruction designed by the author on changes from informal to formal knowledge. The experiment strategy was derived form Clement's (1993) model of Bridging Analogies Strategy. 25 elementary school students (4 th grade) were instructed in action and reaction of force. Students' verbalizations during the lesson were investigated using an interpretive analysis, and their protocols in a pretest posttest, and transfer test were investigated using a quantitative analysis. These data indicated the following conclusions : (1) During the lesson, students interpreted the mechanism of force of action and reaction by detecting analogies with "Anchor", "Bridging", and "Target". (2) Students were instructed to relate phenomenological primitives to phenomena which were in conflict with informal knowledge through experiment and observation of a videotaped lesson, so that reconstruction of the knowledge was induced. (3) Students who understood other's ideas presented during the lesson and accommodated them with their own ideas, showed a higher degree of generalization.

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In order to improve science literacy, the present authors have been developing several kinds of teaching materials in the field of home economics education. One such recent example is a new type of turbidimeter, which consists of a solar cell and a light emitting diode furnished with a cooling function. By using this material, they attempts to determine the gelatinizing temperature of starch and the value of cloud point of nonionic surfactants. These figures stand very close results with those reported in the previous empirical studies. Finally, they present several teaching examples in a classroom context in which this turbidimeter will be employed.

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This research compares the effects of making a model for the purpose of increasing a student's observational abilities to the effects of sketching. In this case, each student had previously sketched a leaf arrangement to observe how the leaves were attached to a stem. By making a model, students could point out many more details about how the leaves were attached and were much more descriptive in their observations of leaf arrangements both during and after model-making. As a result, students not only learned more from model-making than sketching, but retained more information when tested two months later for example, by being able to describe how sunlight affects leaf arrangement. Thus, model-making was found to be more effective than sketching in two important ways: 1) students observed more details, and 2) students retained more information about what they were studying. Model-making, then, can be said to be a more effective way of enhancing the observation and retention of details and information than sketching.

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A mole is the most fundamental unit, which is in textbooks of chemistry in high school. One mole indicates the groups of Avogadro of particles, such as an atom, a molecule, and an ion. At school, the measurement experiment of the Avogadro constant is hardly ever practiced considering the measurements' inaccuracy and complication. However, since the measurement experiment of the Avogadro constant is the most fundamental value of chemistry, it is to be desirable that if the measurement could be implemented. To make it capable of precision, the method using a salt crystal was devised. Salt crystals were produced in two ways. The first method, it was acquired from cleavage of bay salt, and the second method was processed by evaporation of saturated salt water. The mass and the volume of the prepared salt crystal were measured, and the Avogadro constant were measured from using the value of each radius of sodium ion and chloride ion. This measurement gives us accuracy; also, it can be performed in a short time period without using any special instruments. As the further study, a good result was acquired from the measurement experiment of the Avogadro constant using the metal crystal. Next, the "measurement experiment of the Avogadro constant using bay salt" was practiced in a chemistry class and also a chemistry club activity in high school. Then, a questionnaire survey to students was sent out to verify the effects of the class. From the manufacture of the salt crystal using cleavage, students showed interests and delight. Once this experiment prepared the crystal, it will be an adovantage that it can be used at any time. Furthermore, through this experiment, the microscopic of a crystal lattice or ion and the huge Avogadro constant are realizable.

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This paper presents an innovative method for cultivating pupils' self-consciousness in science lessons. The essence of this method basically consists of questions by their teacher's question that stimulate pupils to realize what other pupils think : "Tell me your idea about what your classmate realizes from the phenomenon we have just observed", for example. This question encourags the pupil to try to describe what his or her classmate realizes in contrast to what the pupil him/herself realizes ; consequently, the pupil can deepen his or her feeling of individuality. In addition, the other pupil also deepens his or her feeling of individuality at the same by listen in to the pupil's answer. This means that these two pupils are aware of "Their own thoughts" by comparing them to the other's thoughts. Therefore, questions of this type are effective in cultivating pupils' self-consciousness and acquiring experience in conducting metacognitive thinking. Through questions of this type, pupils exchange ideas with each other, and the teacher succeeds in bringing out pupils ideas on the subject.

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Direct experience through experimental teaching materials is important for students to acquire scientific concepts. Here we describe a case study conducted at a public high school in Nagano Prefecture, in which our proposed unit program of seven hours class based on the energy concept was administered to students to understand oxidation-reduction through the principle of electro-chemical cell by a successive combination of five kinds of experiments. Through experiments using daily life materials such as crystal earphone and fruits, students not only enhanced their learning wills, but also correlated chemistry with daily life experiences. Although students were at first perplexed by experiments dealing with unfamiliar phenomena, they created a common key word from the questions they encountered. Investigations for answering the questions made students confident in science study, as they solved the questions by themselves through experiments, and, through the unit program, most students understood the concepts of oxidation-reduction and electro-chemical cell, based on the energy concept. It is thus suggested that our unit program focusing on direct experimental experience is useful for students to gain deeper understanding of oxidation-reduction and the principle of electro-chemical cell.

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In an attempt to promote the understanding of life science, in particular DNA function, in junior and senior high school students, we have conducted a 2-day laboratory course on DNA and recombinant DNA technology in the Kanto area twice, in 2001 and 2002. We used the Biotechnology Explorer kit, available from Bio-Rad Laboratories as follows: 1) E. coli cells susceptible to ampicillin are converted to a resistant form by transformation with a DNA plasmid, pGLO, and 2) the transformed cells produce a fluorescent protein, GFP, which can be visualized by UV irradiation of colonies of cells. We also supervised an experiment where DNA is extracted from chicken liver. We analyzed the ability of the students to understand the experiments using the following three materials: 1) a written test before (pre-test) and after (post-test) the experimental course, 2) reports concerning the experiments, 3) a questionnaire. Based on these data we conclude that the majority of the students comprehended the experiments. We also discussed the significance of conducting laboratory experiments in recombinant DNA for junior and senior high school students

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The purpose of this study is to show the effectiveness of classroom teaching for better geometrization skills. The author developed a problem involving a traffic accident caused by a wide blind zone, devised a means of geometrization for the relation among several phenomena, and practiced it with first grade junior high school students. The results showed it to be effective; students could represent the blind zone rightly by the means devised, and became able to draw more abstract geometrical figures. Moreover it was found that almost all of the students managed to solve real-world problems through mathematical modelling.

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