Thermal cameras have shown to have utility in secondary school classrooms and undergraduate courses. In this paper, the author argues for their potential in the primary school classroom and presents a range of activities that can be undertaken with thermal cameras (or supplied images). With limited access in mind, the activities in this paper have…

Nature Friendly Schools (NFS) is a groundbreaking project funded by the UK Department for Education and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs with support from Natural England. It works in partnership with many organisations including the Wildlife Trusts, Young Minds and the Field Studies Council. By developing teachers'…

Recently, Virtual reality (VR) technologies have started to be used increasingly in the field of education, as in many other fields. With the widespread use of virtual reality applications, there is a need to investigate the effects of virtual reality applications in the field of education. The results obtained from these researches can contribute…

This study aims to determine the effectiveness of the author's teaching technology in developing schoolchildren's research skills, the challenges an elementary school faces, and how the entire process of developing research skills works. Quantitative and qualitative research techniques were used. Participants were from No.15, No.1, No.46, and…

The blended synchronous classroom fosters equitable and balanced educational development; however, challenges persist, including low motivation and suboptimal effects on the deep learning of remote students. This study employs a student-centered learning approach and incorporates the process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) strategy into…

In this article, the author aims to open up thinking about a frequently used term -- disadvantage -- and to consider it in relation to the primary science classroom teaching and learning experiences. With the support of education charities such as the Comino Foundation and the SHINE Trust, the author discusses how her team has been exploring the…

There is a need for robust, empirically-validated conceptualisations of teachers' attitudes towards teaching science, with a view to understand how these might explain their intention to teach science. The "Dimensions of Attitudes Toward Science" (DAS) theoretical framework suggests that cognitive, affective and perceived control…

Interdisciplinary teaching and learning is an approach that synthesizes the curricular objectives and methods of two or more disciplines or subjects focusing on a specific topic or issue. While it is being increasingly implemented in universities, at lower levels of education there are still countries where science subjects are taught and learned…

Why is modern physics still today, more than 100 years after its birth, the privilege of an elite of scientists and unknown for the great majority of citizens? The answer is simple, since modern physics is in general not present in the standard physics curricula, except for some general outlines, in the final years of some secondary schools. But,…

An experimental science curriculum for primary school was introduced in Croatia for the 1st time in the 2023/24 school year. This is taking place against the backdrop of a shortage of teachers from various science subjects, especially physics. They are increasingly being replaced by non-professional teachers, often those with a Master of Primary…

This article explores the integration of the art studio framework developed by Harvard University's Project Zero into science education and investigates its influence on the academic achievements of third-grade students. This study involved a cohort of 140 third-grade students from a primary school in Iran, 70 of whom were students assigned to an…

There is broad agreement in the literature (e.g. Furtak et al., 2012; Harlen and Qualter, 2018) that the purpose of primary science is for children to develop: (1) scientific skills; (2) knowledge and understanding of some scientific concepts; (3) positive attitudes to science; an understanding of the nature of science; and (4) an appreciation of…

Science education reform efforts have emphasized the incorporation of more authentic and meaningful scientific practices into formal learning environments. With this focus on practices, such as scientific modeling, a powerful tool for sense-making and reasoning, comes a need to observe and understand if and how it is actually occurring,…

Previous studies suggested that epistemically more sophisticated students learned better in a constructivist learning context than epistemically less sophisticated students did. This study further examined if students with "higher" prior epistemic beliefs (EB High) had better learning gains than students with "lower" prior…

Despite the pivotal role that science now plays in everyday life, and countless viable future career options for children, in many cases it is still considered less of a 'core subject' than its curriculum relatives -- namely English and maths. While this has been helped in recent years with a greater emphasis on STEM subjects, there is still some…