gible and uncomplicated equipment. Features like cloud chambers and voltmeters may obscure learning because of their complexity, and less sophisticated experiments will allow students to control variables, collect data, and draw conclusions based on their data. Constructive experiments may include: does cold water freeze faster than hot, must seeds be soaked in water before they germinate, does the rate of evaporation of water depend on the temperature alone (Philips, Feb. 1976, p.31)? Piaget believed that traditional schools have failed to train students in experimentation, such as the variation of one factor when the other have been neutralized. Future teaching methods will have to give increasingly greater scope to the activity and grouping of students as well as to the spontaneous handling of devices to confirm or refute a hypothesis for a phenomenon. If there is any area which active methods will become imperative, it is that in which experimental procedures are learned. The basic principle of active methods may be expressed to understand is to discover; or reconstruct by discovery. These conditions must be met with if future students are formed who are capable of production and creativity, and not simply repetition (Piaget, 1973, p.19). Teachers will increasingly have to focus on student learning at the secondary level of if the goals of science education are going to be achieved to a greater extent than at the present. Science teachers who are chiefly concerned about themselves in relation to their teaching role or about their adequacy as a teacher, will be unable to focus on the intellectual capabilities of their students, in spite of the importance an...
