This study investigates the strategies and assumptions that college students entering an introductory physical geology laboratory use to interpret topographic maps, and follows the progress of the students during the laboratory to analyze changes in those strategies and assumptions. To elicit students' strategies and assumptions, we created and refined a topographic visualization test that was administered before and after instruction to 26 students during the first semester of the study and to 92 students during the second semester. To more deeply understand how students think about and conceptualize topographic maps, we focused on eight individual students who were interviewed about their pretest and posttest answers as well as videotaped during three laboratory sessions. We found that even students who claim never to have worked with topographic maps often perform impressively on their pretests by making useful assumptions about symbolic topographic information. Some students, however, begin with less productive assumptions that may be unfamiliar to some instructors (e.g., thinking that the spacing of contour lines indicates elevation instead of slope). Initial success should not be misinterpreted, however, as an integrated understanding of topographic maps. Only in posttest interviews do most students express explanations integrating multiple normative assumptions. In addition to highlighting the strategies and assumptions that college students use to interpret topographic maps, we outline the implications of these findings for the design of learning objectives, curricular activities, and assessments for topographic lessons in introductory college geology courses and the training of future geoscientists.

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Editing your journal is a responsibility that we gladly bear and which we hope we can execute responsibly and to the satisfaction of all. We know that there will always be critics of some action that we have taken, and we welcome such criticism. However, we also hope that a free and open exchange of information can help to create a climate within which we can all work pro®tably.Consequently, we are presenting as this month's editorial the substance of our annual report to the Board of Directors of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. The information contained in this report tracks the progress of all manuscripts received during our ®rst year of service as editors of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Overview of SubmissionsDuring the period January±December 2001, we considered manuscripts obtained from a variety of sources. Primarily, these new manuscripts were sent directly to us. However, we have also been given manuscripts that were accepted under the previous editors, as well as resubmissions of manuscripts previously considered but not accepted. We do not include in this analysis manuscripts that were accepted under the stewardship of the former editors.The number and types of manuscripts received during the ®rst year under the new editorship were sorted and then analyzed for trends in peak periods, research interest areas, and decisions. A month-by-month analysis (Fig. 1) illustrates that manuscript submissions peaked in April, at the time of the NARST annual meeting, and steadily declined throughout the summer months. A steady number of submissions occurred during the holiday season. The two slowest months of 2001 were January and September. These represent the beginning of the spring and fall semesters of the academic year. For many of our contributors, these were times when they were presumably busy with tasks other than preparing manuscripts.The following summary highlights the types of manuscripts that were received for January± December 2001: International RepresentationAlmost 34% of submissions were sent from foreign countries. Canada (Fig. 2) represents the most (21%) international submissions. Of the 47 international manuscripts, 21 different

WISE Investments (WI) is a four-year National Science Foundation project HRD 98 72818 designed for secondary science/mathematics teachers and counselors to enable them to help interest young women in engineering. A component of the WI program is gender equity training. Although the gender equity professional development module improved each year, the program coordinators thought that they could do better. In particular, teachers requested more applications and classroom strategies than statistics. In the fourth WI, a new approach to the gender equity presentation was taken by enlisting three Ph.D. science education majors and one Ph.D. education policy and leadership major. These four students all had recent and extensive experience in teaching K-12 science, thus had a natural understanding and empathy of the needs and everyday challenges of the teachers and counselors in the WI program.The training was organized around practical applications of gender equity in curriculum, instruction, and classroom climate. The PhD student team used expert teaching methods to gain credibility with the participants and to model best practices in instruction. Rather than reciting research, a gender equity assessment tool was designed to present the current findings in the literature and to evaluate the WI participants' awareness of gender equity. The PhD team then facilitated gender equity discussions with the teachers and counselors by soliciting examples from the group. Next, the participants worked in small teams to identify gender bias in textbooks and to examine biases in teacher-to-student interactions through a case study analysis. The group also viewed and discussed the teacher-to-student interactions shown in a video. The PhD team also devised specific strategies to improve curriculum, instruction, and classroom climate for girls. The teacher and counselor WI participants further brainstormed and personalized these strategies for immediate implementation in their classrooms. This paper will present the agenda for the successful three-hour workshop in two segments, the gender equity assessment tool, the guidelines for examining gender bias in textbooks, the interaction case study, and the classroom strategies to avoid bias and to promote gender equity in the classroom. Additionally, feedback from the WI participants on this training will be discussed.