Recently, there has been much research on cooperative learning among students. However, there is little research on the effects of cooperative learning, such as promoting the understanding of scientific concepts and the proper utilization of lab equipment. The purpose of this research project is to clarify the effects of cooperative learning structured by the five elements of Johnson, et al. Experimental lessons were conducted on the units about chemistry and meteorology in a lower secondary school. The experimental group classrooms introduced cooperative learning, the control group classrooms did not. The results are as follows: (1) The students in the experimental group made fewer mistakes in operating lab equipment and breaking them. (2) The students in the experimental group understood scientific concepts well after one month. (3) The students in the experimental group recognized that discussion and advice among students are important for experiments. These results suggest that cooperative learning structured by the five elements of Johnson, et al. is effective in lower secondary science classrooms.

The experience of nature is indispensable for the development of young children. In recent years, the biotope is attracting much attention as a place that provides people with an intimate experience of nature. However, the utilization of the biotope in the educational setting of young children has not yet gained popularity. In this study, based on a year-round observation of the way in which young children were involved with a biotope, I attempt to understand structurally the kinds of influence experiences of nature have on children's development by using the "Structural Model" of natural objects that becomes part of children' s primary experience: the senses and emotions involved, the experience of recognition, and their educational benefits. Ultimately, the purpose of this study is to determine desirable ways in which young children have nature experiences for their development. The results of this study revealed that nature education fosters scientific thinking, nurtures respect toward nature, heals the heart, and enhances motivation. Furthermore, in respect to desirable ways for children to experience nature, I suggest the following: (1) to develop both indoor and outdoor educational environments in a complementary and integrated manner, (2) to make "sky/weather/climate" a type of primary experience, and (3) to look for resourceful ways to broaden the use of the five senses in nature experience.

The purpose of this research project is to clarify the relation between the student's consciousness in individual and collaborative learning scenes. The learning scenes focused on an experiment. Two kinds of questionnaires corresponding to the two learning scenes were created and distributed. As a result, the following points were determined. Differences were found between the amount of material in a learning scene and the deepening/changing of an idea, according to the type of learning scene. Moreover, differences were found between an individual learning scene and a collaborative learning scene, by measuring the strength of correlation according to the study scene. The necessity of using individual and collaborative learning scenes effectively became clear.

The purpose of this research is to create an environment for socio-cultural learning in which students in a fifth-grade science class studying the dissolution of substances can participate explicity in communicative activity. For this purpose an electronic board was used as an intermediary to function as a supportive tool. Three roles of the electronic board were examined: 1) as a dialogue board used to classify and organize ideas; 2) as a dialogue board used to exchange ideas by (a) exchanging information using drawings, (b) exchanging information through collaborative activity; and 3) to explain experimental procedures. As a result, it was suggested that the electronic board helped to focus various ideas in real time during discourse and prompted cooperative construction of scientific concepts.

In the national curriculum, the electric current wasn't treated as the flow of free electrons. Then the model of the flow of water came to be used in order to treat this subject in science textbooks. In these textbooks, current and voltage were explained in terms of water current and fall. In this research project, the guidance method of a scientific analogy was investigated, based on the actual use of the analogy between a water current and an electric current circuit. As a result, there were many junior high school students who used the analogy based on objective resemblances in the first stage of study. These junior high school students then became able to use the analogy to describe an electric current circuit in a scientific manner.

In this study, we analyzed the processes of conceptual change of students learning about evolution. The following processes (1) - (3) were identified: (1) enlargement of denotation of concept. (2) conception in the learners' meta-cognition. (3) change in the connotation of concept, and awareness of conceptual change.It became clear that processes (2) - (3) played an important role in the conceptual changes. Consequently, we conclude that Hashweh's idea of demarcation has promoted the function of these processes in the design of science teaching.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how new communication activities facilitate students' ability to explain things consistently and to determine their impact on student motivation, understanding, and attitude. Forty-eight students (twenty-four girls and twenty-four boys) who studied the topic of oxidation reduction in a public junior high school were divided into twelve groups, each with four students (two girls and two boys). The teacher introduced communication activities and the concept of "the tendency to burn" in order to facilitate the students' ability to explain consistently. Students' motivation, understanding, and attitude were evaluated by using a pre-test, a post-test, and a post-post-test. As a result of our research, the following two points became clear: 1) Over 80% of the students were able to explain the newly-introduced topic "Tatara steel manufacture" in the post-test and the post-post-test. 2) Once students realized the importance of explaining scientific phenomena consistently, they were able to apply this new awareness to other scientific questions, and their enhanced understanding of oxidation reduction was maintained for at least two months.

Finding ways to develop children's naive concepts into scientific concepts is one of the important tasks of science classes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between hypothetical examples in experimental activities and children's concepts regarding "the expansion of air" in the "quantity and temperature of air" unit in the fourth grade of elementary school science class. As a result of the investigation, the following points became clear: 1) Children's naive "circle type," "upward type," and "compression gushing type" concepts were often modified into the scientific "expansion type" concept while they performed experiments with hypothetical examples. 2) The children whose ideas changed about the scientific concept regarding "the expansion of air" monitored their naive concepts and noticed the contradictions in them while performing experiments with hypothetical examples.

The main purpose of this study is to clarify how lower secondary school students in Japan understand the shape of the earth by using a questionnaire to ask why the shape of the earth is spherical, but the ground looks like flat. The findings of this study are as follows: 1) less than 30% of the students had a scientifically correct understanding of the shape of the earth; and 2) the students' preconceptions, including scientific conceptions, about the shape of the earth could be classified into thirty categories.