Joyce,B., Weil,M., & Calhoun, E.(2009). Models of teaching (Eighth Edition).

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

- Concept attainment is the search for and listing of attributes that can be used to distinguish
exemplars from nonexemplars of various categories (Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin, 1967)
- Concept information, requires a student to decide the basic on which will build categories.
- Concept attainment requires a student to figure out the attributes of a category that is
already formed in another persons mind by comparing and contrasting examples that
contain the characteristic of the concept with examples that do not.
- Concept teaching provides a chance a analyze the students thinking processes and to help
them develop more effective strategies.
- When creating a data set for instruction, it is wise to begin with examples where the value of
the attributes is high, dealing with the more ambiguous one after the concept has been well
established.
- Once a category is established, it is named so that we can refer to it symbolically. As the
student name the categories, they should do so in terms of attributes (characteristic).
- The concept attainment process is not one of guessing names. It is to get the attributes of a
category clear.
- If student know a concept, they can easily learn the name for it, and their verbal expressions
will be more articulate.
- Students develop procedural knowledge (how to attain concepts) with practice, and also
that the more procedural knowledge the students posses, the more effectively they attain
and can apply conceptual knowledge.
Harlen, W.(2000). The Teaching of Science in Primary School(Third Edition).
London, David Fulton Publishers Ltd
- When scientific activity is regarded as being the application of principles and skills which
have to be learned, the aims of education in science are conceived as being primarily to
teach these principles and skills. The dominant role of class activities is then seen as being to
demonstrates the skills and to prove the principles.
- Benchmarks of Scientific Literacy (AAAS 1993 ,p.xi) The aim is to promote literacy in science,
mathematics, and technology in order to help people live interesting, responsible, and
productive lives. In a culture increasingly pervaded by science, mathematics and technology,
science literacy requires understandings and habits of mind that enable citizens to grasp
what those enterprises are up to, to make sense of how the natural





Bailer, J., Ramig, J.E., Ramsey, J.M. (2006). Teaching Science Process Skills
United States of America, Milestone
- The scientific approach to understanding such events is a process that breaks complex
events into parts that can be studied and understood. These parts of an event or system are
called variables. Variables are factors, condition, and/or relationships that can be changed in
an event or system. In order to learn about scientific investigation, you first need to learn
the skill associated with identifying and manipulating variables.
o What variables might affect the taste of pizza?
o What variables might affect the miles per gallon of an automobile?
- Manipulated variable is a factor or condition that is intentionally changed by an investigator
in an experiment. A responding or variable is a factor or condition that might be affected as
a result of that change. A variable that is not changes is called a controlled variable.
- Science uses investigations that require a problem to solve or answer. The most important
part of every investigation is variables. When an investigator identifies the variables of an
event, an interesting and important research question will often become obvious. A research
question defines the problem to be studied. Once research question have been formed, they
influence the decision that will be made about the subsequent investigation.
Wolfinger, M.D. (2000). Science in the Elementary and Middle School
United States, Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.
- The variable purposely changed by the experimenter in order to determine its effect on the
rest of the system is called the independent variable. The experimenter expects a change in
the dependent variable to cause a change in some other part of the system. The changed
variable, resulting from the manipulation of the independent variable in order to change. A
change in the independent variable usually results in a change in the dependent variables. If
this change is to be correctly attributed to the change in the independent variable, all other
aspects of the system must remain the same. The factors kept the same are referred to as
constant.
- Control of variables is a process that only becomes possible when an individual has reached
the level of formal operational thought, the final stage of development hypothesized by
Piaget. It may also be the one stage of development identified by Piaget that is not reached
by all normal human beings. Chiapetta (1976) showed that as many as 85 percent of
adolescents and young adults do not reach the stage of formal operation. In general the
ability to use formal operation thought does not begin until the child reaches about 11 or 12
years of age.
- According to Inhelder and Piaget (1958), the ability to control the variables develops in four
stages. During the first stage, the individual is unable to differentiate between the action of
the variables and his or her own actions. The student at this stage may, when working with
the pendulum, be unable to determine that how hard he or she pushes the pendulum has no
bearing on the number of swings the pendulum makes in a minute. In the second stages, the
learner is able to rule out himself or herself as the cause of a change but has difficulty
distinguished between relevant and irrelevant variables. In this case, the learner may
discover that the length of the pendulum affects the number of swings but will remained
unconvinced that other factors do not cause changes. In stages 3, the student is able to
isolate one variable and keep others constant. The learner may, however, state that one
variables is going to be manipulated, and then actually manipulate another. Consequently,
the student may state that he or she is going to test for the effect of weight on the
pendulum and actually test for the effect of string length. The child does this without
realization. Finally, in stage 4, the individual becomes able correctly to manipulate and
control variables, the same as the scientist does.
- Children at stage 1 are not yet ready cognitively to work with the control of variables except
in a situation that is highly structured by the teacher. Even then, it is unlikely children will be
able to learn meaningfully. Rather than force stage one children to carry out a meaningless
experiment, go back to the cause-and-effect processes and help the children develop the
ability to identify the relevant parts of a experiment and attributed correctly cause and
effect in simple investigation. Once children are able to identify relevant factors and to rule
out their own participation, you can move to stage 2. Stage 2 children are able to rule out
themselves as a cause but may not be able to rule out all variables other than the relevant
one. In this case, encourage children to identify all the factors they consider possible causes
of an effect, develop experiments in which each of the factors tested in a turn, and produce
a chart that indicates which variables are direct causes of a phenomenon and which are not.
Time will probably not permit each child to test each factor, or even each small group of
children to test each factor. However, each small group could be assigned one factor to test
and the results pooled to provide the total picture. Final conclusions can then be drawn on
the basis of the testing of all identified possibilities rather than only one. In stage 3, when
children are able to identify factors independently and to rule out some, the problem is to
be certain that the identified factor is actually being tested. This stage is easy for the teacher,
who needs only check experimental procedure against intention to see if there is a correct
match. The last stage should be one of independent work, so that children who have
develop the ability to use the experiment appropriately are able to do so. At this point the
child is able to gain content information and to generate ideas that can be tested through
experimentation or through the use of other sources of information.