The demand for improving student interest in science has increased efforts toward teaching Einstein's theory of general relativity in schools. Research has already shown that teaching Einsteinian gravity at the secondary level is feasible, however, appropriate resources must be readily available for science teachers to make Einsteinian gravity…

The purpose of this open letter is to report on an innovative cross-cultural science education program that was introduced to upper primary and lower high schools across New South Wales over a four-year period. Titled 'Sky Stories', the program blends current Western science understandings with Indigenous Australian knowledge of astronomy in order…

EngQuest, an initiative of Engineers Australia, provides an exciting, non-competitive way for students to participate in free, fun and educational engineering activities involving mathematics, science and technology. This article describes a project designed to teach middle school students how to construct a water catchment system. Water…

Originally called Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education, Thinking Science is a program of 30 lessons, usually delivered in Years 7 and 8, that has been shown to improve learner outcomes in science, maths and English. Over recent years, it has grown in popularity in Australia and was the subject of an ARC-funded research project at the…

Energy is one of the most complex yet central concepts taught in schools and is featured in the Australian Science Curriculum, as one of the six key organising ideas (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2015). The literature portrays a multitude of complications associated with teaching energy (see Millar, 2005 for a…

This project is for a team of students (groups of two or three are ideal) to design and construct a model of a single-span bridge, using plastic drinking straws as the building material. All steps of the design, construction, testing and critiquing stages should be recorded by students in a journal. Students may like to include labelled diagrams,…

EngQuest, an initiative of Engineers Australia, provides an exciting, non-competitive way for students to participate in free, fun and educational engineering activities involving mathematics, science and technology. This article provides a sample of one of the middle school activities in the program. The history of water wheels, and their use…

Smartphones are used widely by the general public and students. They are one of the most popular and easily accessible technologies. These devices were originally designed as a means of communication. However, they have evolved into a mobile computing platform with built in sensors and the ability to access a vast number of applications. This…

Engaging middle school students in science continues to be a challenge in Australian schools. One initiative that has been tried in the senior years but is a more recent development in the middle years is the context-based approach. In this ethnographic study, we researched the teaching and learning transactions that occurred in one ninth grade…

The aim of this research was to identify whether students of various academic abilities would achieve positive gains in cognitive ability after completing a modified cognitive acceleration program based on the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) program. This research was quasi-experimental in design, with small samples of…

Increasingly, children today are becoming disconnected from the natural environments resulting in a diminished sense of self, place and community. In an attempt to find out their perceptions, attitudes and values about the natural world, twenty-five Year 6 and 7 students from a northern Adelaide primary school participated in a nature-play case…

A practical exercise for developing a simple cost-effective solar ultraviolet radiation dosimeter is presented for use by middle school science students. Specifically, this exercise investigates a series of experiments utilising the historical blue print reaction, combining ammonium iron citrate and potassium hexacyanoferrate to develop an…

In Australia, there is a crisis in science education with students becoming disengaged with canonical science in the middle years of schooling. One recent initiative that aims to improve student interest and motivation without diminishing conceptual understanding is the context-based approach. Contextual units that connect the canonical science…

A teacher-researcher in a primary school setting surveyed the middle years' teachers of her school and those in the local science hub group, to determine their confidence and satisfaction levels in relation to teaching science. Her results confirm feelings of inadequacy and reluctance to teach Science, but also indicate ways that schools can…

Capturing students' interest in science at the junior levels is crucial to not only improving the uptake of science at senior levels but to promoting science literacy in all students in order to prepare them for a society that is very science and technologically driven. This paper presents nanotechnology as an emerging science that is both factual…