Physical and virtual labs have unique capabilities that can influence how students learn from them. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of physical and virtual manipulatives on students' learning of heat and temperature and to examine the influence of various combinations of physical and virtual manipulatives. A total of 205…

Temperature and heat are difficult concepts for children to grasp due to their abstractness. An image-to-writing approach, guided by the visualisation practices of scientists, was designed to engage elementary students with constructing images to represent their ideas about phenomena and translating these images into text using scientific…

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the Context-Based Approach (CBA) enriched by Prediction-Observation-Explanation (POE) on 5th grade students' conceptual understanding of the States of Matter, Heat and Temperature. In this study, quantitative and qualitative data collection methods were employed. The quantitative…

Science teachers often use visual images to help students visualise the abstract concepts of science. Yet, they may not support students in making sense of these visual representations, wrongly assuming that the students can intuitively do it on their own. Pre- and in-service teacher professional development programmes also seldom explicitly teach…

The spread of COVID-19 has caused a high demand for online learning or self-learning at home. We focus on evaluating which media is most suitable for self-learning for the third graders. For effective assessment of children's learning, the study adopted AEIOU: Awareness; Enjoyment; Interest; Opinion formation; and Understanding as the evaluation…

Satellite remote sensing has been largely adopted in all kinds of environmental applications as it has proved to be an excellent tool for research and decision-making purposes. It has also been recognized as an important educational tool in the past years. However, it has been insufficiently incorporated in school practice, especially at the…

When working within a meaningful context quite young students are capable of working with sophisticated data. Year 3 students investigate thermal insulation and the transfer of heat in a STEM inquiry, developing skills in measuring temperature by conducting a statistical investigation, and using a stylised graph to interpret their data.

This study focuses on investigating how students make use of their bodily experiences in combination with infrared (IR) cameras, as a way to make meaning in learning about heat, temperature, and friction. A class of 20 primary students (age 7-8 years), divided into three groups, took part in three IR camera laboratory experiments. The qualitative…

Many children and adults have problems differentiating between heat and temperature. As a consequence, intuitive notions developed about the transfer of heat and other thermal concepts do not align with scientific explanations of the phenomena. These notions are formed as alternative conceptions, which are resistant to change and persist as…

This study of three science teachers' lessons on heat and temperature seeks to characterise classroom talk that highlighted the ways language is used and to examine the nature of the language demands revealed in constructing, negotiating, arguing and communicating science ideas. The transcripts from the entire instructional units for these…

Integration of technology, social learning and scientific models offers pedagogical opportunities for science education. A particularly interesting area is thermal science, where students often struggle with abstract concepts, such as heat. In taking on this conceptual obstacle, we explore how hand-held infrared (IR) visualization technology can…

The purpose of this study was to explore how examples used in teaching may influence elementary school students' conceptions of evaporation and boiling. To this end, the examples traditionally used to explain evaporation and boiling in Korean 4th grade science textbooks were analyzed. The functions of these published examples were explanation…

This study examines the existing knowledge that pre-service elementary teachers (PSETs) have regarding heat energy, heat transfer and insulation. The PSETs' knowledge of heat energy was initially assessed by using an activity: determining which container would be best to keep hot water warm for the longest period of time. Results showed that PSETs…

This paper reports the findings of a study exploring the use of a software package to help pupils understand particulate explanations for melting and evaporation below boiling point. Two matched classes in a primary school in Greece (ages 11-12, n = 16 and 19) were involved in a short intervention of six one hour lessons. Covering the same…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how concept cartoons, together with other diagnostic and scaffolding tools, could be used in formative assessment, to stimulate talk and argumentation among students in small groups, as part of peer-assessment and self-assessment; and to provide diagnostic feedback about students' misconceptions to the…