In light of increasing populations and dwindling natural resources, elementary teachers play a crucial role in ensuring children understand and commit to more sustainable lifestyles. Climate change, growing pressures on global fisheries, and the harmful effects of traditional agricultural methods exacerbate this call. Coupled with this emphasis is…

The aim of the present study was twofold. First, we aimed to replicate the findings of previous studies which had showed a substantial improvement on procedural and epistemological knowledge after direct instruction and their maintenance in time. Second, we aimed to examine the dynamic relationships of the procedural (control of variables…

The main purpose of this research was to develop a guide material in line with learning outcomes of the unit for the 5th Graders titled Solving the Puzzle: Our Body in order to be utilized during out-of-school learning activities by science teachers. There is no guide material developed in our country for science teachers to be used in out-of…

An understanding of statistics and skills in data analysis are becoming more and more essential, yet research consistently shows that students struggle with these concepts at all levels. This case study documents some of the struggles four groups of fifth-grade students encounter as they collect, organize, and interpret data and then ultimately…

The central roles that modelling plays in the processes of scientific enquiry and that models play as the outcomes of that enquiry are well established (Gilbert & Boulter, 1998). Besides, there are considerable similarities between the processes and outcomes of science and technology (Cinar, 2016). In this study, we discuss how the use of…

Reform efforts in science education have aimed at fostering scientific literacy by helping learners meaningfully engage in scientific practices to make sense of the world. In this paper, we report on our second year of unit implementation that has investigated 34 fifth grade students' (10-year-olds) learning about evaporation and condensation…

This commentary seeks to expand the dialogue on place-based science education presented in Katie Lynn Brkich's article, where the connections fifth grade students make between their formal earth science curriculum and their lived experiences are highlighted. The disconnect between the curriculum the students are offered and their immediate…

This paper describes a classroom experiment where students use techniques found in the history of mathematics to learn about an important mathematical idea. More precisely, sixth graders in a primary school follow Archimedes's method of exhaustion in order to compute the number p. Working in a computer environment, students inscribe and…

Courtney Loynachan was a student in Dr. Lindquist's summer 2014 "Teaching Science in the Elementary School" methods course at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The course included an exploration of the power of writing as a learning tool for science with a particular focus on the use of science notebooks. Throughout the…

The purpose of this study was to explore the learning performance of sixth grade elementary school students using newspapers in science teaching. A quasi-experimental design with a single group was used in this study. Thirty-three sixth grade elementary school students participated in this study. The research instruments consisted of three…

This paper describes a case study of how a middle school literacy coach and a science teacher attempted to improve disciplinary literacy teaching in a sixth-grade science class. The collaborative inquiry exposed the disciplinary knowledge gap of the literacy coach (a former language arts teacher) and the science teacher's limited knowledge of…

NGSS Early Implementers is a four-year initiative created to help eight California school districts and two charter management organizations, supported by WestEd's K-12 Alliance, implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Designed for professional developers and administrators, this report describes 10 tools and processes that are…

Promoting positive attitudes about science among teachers has important implications for teachers' classroom practice and for their relationship to science as a discipline. In this paper, we report positive shifts in teachers' attitudes about science, as measured by the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science (CLASS) survey, over the course of…

Understanding complex systems requires reasoning about causal relationships that behave or appear to behave probabilistically. Features such as distributed agency, large spatial scales, and time delays obscure co-variation relationships and complex interactions can result in non-deterministic relationships between causes and effects that are best…

The science learning area of the "New Zealand Curriculum" (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007) requires students to learn about "features of scientific knowledge and the processes by which it is developed" and "carry out science investigations using a variety of approaches." Investigations are mostly, but not always,…