Science textbooks play an important role in making scientific knowledge and applications available to learners. In most countries, science curriculum expects to cultivate scientifically literate individuals who are able to use science process skills. Critical analysis of textbooks is therefore crucial to determine whether they can facilitate this…

This research aims to support the "teaching of concepts" in the 3rd grade Life Science Course with activities. A quasi-experimental design (selective) with a pre-test and post-test control group, one of the quantitative research designs, was used in the research. Using songs, poems, rhymes, acrostics, stories, fairy tales,…

Research has consistently highlighted the importance of promoting child-parent interactions. In this essay, we describe the development of MAKEngineering kits that provide collaborative learning experiences for children in Grades 2-6 to engage in engineering design tasks with members of their families in their home environment. First, we present…

Using an example of a grade 3 science unit about population changes during competition for resources, we describe how we integrated computational thinking (CT) into existing curriculum identifying three levels of depth of integration: identifying connections that already exist, enhancing and strengthening connections, and extending units to…

Despite increased interest in integrating programming education into K-12 programs, there is a lack of studies on teaching debugging to younger age groups. Therefore, this study proposes practical design components for designing unplugged debugging tasks that affect young learners' debugging performance, problem-solving, and self-efficacy,…

To foster students' meaningful learning of science, we designed and implemented a unit for five third-grade students that allowed them to understand Carbon Footprint (CF) in a public school in North Texas. The unit lasted seven weeks, where students identified the effects of distance traveled and packaging on the CF of certain consumable products.…

An understanding of how sensemaking unfolds when elementary students engage in engineering design tasks is crucial to advancing engineering teaching and learning at K-12 levels. Sensemaking has been widely studied in the context of science as a discipline. In this paper, we seek to contribute to the more nascent efforts to build theory about the…

Student engagement in math and science courses decreases starting in middle school and continues throughout high school (Museus, et al., 2011). This lack of engagement results in students taking only the required math and science coursework and not advanced coursework that would help prepare them for future careers in science, technology,…

Evolution by natural selection is key to understanding life and of considerable practical importance in public health, medicine, biotechnology, and agriculture. "The Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) include natural selection among several evolutionary concepts that all third-graders should know. This article explores a novel…

Emotions play a crucial role in knowledge acquisition and can significantly impact motivation when studying a new field. Unfortunately, young people, especially girls, are often not drawn to Computer Science. To address this issue, we conducted an analysis of emotions among 8-9-year-old and 12-13-year-old students engaged in Computational Thinking…

This article describes how two teachers implemented a 5E lesson in a third-grade classroom where the students had been working with forces/motion and investigating things that move like pendulums, swing sets, and various toys. The lesson was included as part of a larger unit on motion. The desired outcome for this lesson was for students to…

Picture this: a PhD chemist, PhD science educator, and a preservice Latina elementary educator walk into an aftercare program for primary and intermediate students from a rural school. These students are identified as low income and at risk and therefore eligible to participate in this school-provided aftercare. While across the state, these same…

STEM (Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology) education has widely been considered to have the potential to prepare students with 21st-century skills. Though the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) is concerned with developing human resources for the 21st-century, STEM education has not yet achieved a strong position in the national…

Representation in science is anything that stands for something else--drawings, pictures, graphs, or other representational forms (Danish et al. 2020). Representations serve as public displays of phenomena that make aspects of those phenomena explicit (Gilbert 2008). They can serve to make the invisible visible, communicate ideas, display…

Computational thinking has been taught in elementary classrooms in other countries for many years, but in the United States this has only been a focus recently due to the drastic shortage of computer scientists. Early exposure to computational thinking has been shown to motivate students to pursue STEM careers, especially computer science (Jin,…