Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." In order to develop his theories, he had to use his imagination and go beyond the facts generally accepted. He needed time to think and to imagine. Knowledge has a valuable part to play, but the current emphasis in England on end-of-key-stage assessments and…

There is a strong body of evidence that science was not taught consistently to primary-aged children across England and that their memories of science prior to 1989 centre around the "nature table." While secondary initial teacher education (ITE) before the National Curriculum had a strong subject focus, this was rarely the case for…

The children from Locks Heath Junior School, Southampton, had perceptive and thoughtful views about "Why science?" In this paper, the children share their thoughts about what science is and why they think it is important. This paper presents only a small selection of their far-ranging thoughts on the subject. The emphasis on…

This article discusses how a regular walk in the wind or the rain can help develop science knowledge and skills. The author describes one "welly-walk" and links it to National Curriculum for England requirements so that readers can see how easy it is. (Contains 1 figure and 1 box.)

How happy are you about teaching science? Building on similar work from the Leverhulme Primary Project and the Primary Horizons, the authors pursued this question with 303 head teachers, science coordinators, and class teachers across England in a recent questionnaire survey. The findings point to very real progress being made in many areas of…

Investigates different perceptions of resource provision, management, and use to support investigative and other practical science. Findings indicate that overall schools are building up an increasingly broad resource base, reflecting the range of content required in the National Curriculum. Findings also indicate inadequate quantities of basic…

The author's favourite film musical is "The King and I." Of the several catchy songs in the film her favourite is "Getting to know you," which is sung firstly by the governess to the children and then the children to her. The author hereby declares this to be "The Song of Science," with "you" being the "system" being studied (e.g. plant, elastic…

Reports on a survey of primary teachers on science curriculum development. Cites a plethora of planning terminology and lack of a government-agency model for a primary science plan as obstacles to curriculum planning. Presents a curriculum planning model derived from the rationale that curriculum should be learning-outcomes-driven. (PVD)

Since 1990 the science curriculum in Northern Ireland has gone through three major changes. In the beginning, fifteen attainment targets were introduced to an unsuspecting and largely unprepared teaching population: these were eventually reduced to five in 1993 and then to the present two in 1996. Unlike in England, technology has never stood as…

What do the Internet, mobile phones, SATs, global warming, wetsuits, wind farms, laptops, recycling bins, iPods, the NLS and the Beckhams have in common? Answer: virtually no one had heard of any of these in 1986, when the first issue of "PSR" came out. The world of children and teachers has clearly changed since then. So what of "PSR" itself?…

A group of science coordinators in the London Borough of Newham decided that they wanted to create an exciting, stimulating and creative curriculum for teaching science across key stages 1 and 2 (5-11 year-olds). They were motivated to do this because they were concerned about an overloaded curriculum, dominated by literacy and numeracy, with…

In those far off days, before the days of the National Curriculum, there lived two rare beasts in the primary jungle. The beasts were known as "science" and "citizenship", and it depended on which school one went to, and which teacher one got, as to whether one learned any science at all or whether discussion of ethical issues…

When one begins to look at science in primary schools elsewhere, one is immediately struck by the fact that those in England are the odd-ones-out. Hence this is the second in a series of articles looking at how science is dealt with in other systems, beginning with England's immediate neighbours and then looking outwards towards school systems in…

The national curriculum in Japan is termed the Course of Study, the revised version of which was implemented in 2000 for kindergarten, or nursery schools, and since 2002 for elementary or primary schools. The Course of Study for Science specifies content only in broad terms, placing the greatest emphasis on process, learning to learn and…

In this article, the author focuses on developing scientific reasoning in year 6 children. Having embarked on a series of lessons in which the author hoped to uncover children's ideas about how and why they reason in a particular way, the results were to prove instrumental in developing not only his teaching of scientific enquiry, but also the…