The study explored the possibilities to improve students' argumentation ability concerning factors that affect dissolving, through the implementation of two versions of a teaching scheme, with and without particle theory. The participants (age range 10-11, n = 27) belonged to two fifth-grade classes of a primary school in Northern Greece. Data…

Scientific inquiry requires the replication of results in experimental studies. Recent studies draw a severe picture on the need of replication and the difficulties in replicating already published studies. As replicated confirmation of results is the basis of scientific and medical research, there may be a need to introduce the topic of…

This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month's issue discusses how children think about the small-particle model of matter. What Richard Feynman referred to as the "atomic hypothesis" is perhaps more familiar to us as the small-particle model of matter. In its most basic form, the model states…

Given that students are constantly communicating and documenting special experiences in their social and private lives with digital devices, we suggest that this behavior could be used to record and deepen learning experiences-such as visualizing reactions at the molecular level-in a chemistry class. An example would be the creation of stop-motion…

The Australian Curriculum: Science for Year 5 includes "recognising that the colour of an object depends on the properties of the object and the color of the light source". This article shows how much more can be done with color in the science laboratory. Activities include using a prism to explore white light, using a hand lens to…

In the present paper, we have examined the impact of explicit linkage between simulated (i.e., virtual) and real (i.e., physical) experimental settings in order to scaffold conceptual understanding, in the case of floating and sinking (F/S) phenomena explanations. This research is part of a research-based curriculum project and has been…

Qualitative research conducted with 237 pupils from Canada, France, and Morocco, between 10 and 12 years of age, on the setting and functioning of simple electric circuits, demonstrates that similar explanatory systems of the students. For this, we had given them a paper and pencil questionnaire of a sixty minutes duration. The first question was…

Given that a user interface interacts with users, a critical factor to be considered in improving the usability of an e-learning user interface is user-friendliness. Affordances enable users to more easily approach and engage in learning tasks because they strengthen positive, activating emotions. However, most studies on affordances limit…

The purpose of this study is to investigate characteristics of limit concepts through the simultaneous use of historical and experimental epistemologies. Based on a historical epistemology which is an investigation of historical developments in a mathematical concept raised in the history of mathematics, four different developments of limit…

The authors investigated the impact of explicit instruction and peer-assisted writing on students' writing motivation and self-efficacy for writing. Eleven teachers and their 206 fifth- and sixth-grade students participated in a 2 (explicit instruction vs. writing opportunities without explicit instruction) × 2 (peer-assisted writing vs. writing…

To prepare students for participation in our society, where interpreting, representing, and manipulating of dynamic phenomena are becoming key activities, we believe that one should start developing a mathematical understanding of change at an early age. We therefore started a design research project to teach the concept of instantaneous speed in…

Scientific investigations are usually introduced to children by referring to phenomena and occurrences that they already know about from their environment. The goal is that children learn to understand everyday observations and experiences from a scientific perspective, pose questions, express and test simple hypotheses by planning and performing…

Three experiments examined the role of phonology in the activation of word meanings in Grade 5 students. In Experiment 1, homophone and spelling control errors were embedded in a story context and participants performed a proofreading task as they read for meaning. For both good and poor readers, more homophone errors went undetected than spelling…

This study examined age-group differences in eye movements among third-grade, fifth-grade, and adult Japanese readers. In Experiment 1, Japanese children, but not adults, showed a longer fixation time on logographic kanji words than on phonologically transparent hiragana words. Further, an age-group difference was found in the first fixation…

Prior research shows that representational competencies that enable students to use graphical representations to reason and solve tasks is key to learning in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains. We focus on two types of representational competencies: (1) "sense making" of connections by verbally explaining how…