Background: Immersive virtual reality (IVR) applications that support student learning have gained increasing interest. However, empirical studies exploring the educational potential of using IVR in primary school science classrooms are lacking. Objectives: This study developed a series of IVR science lessons for primary school students and…

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…

Background: The question of the efficiency of withholding answers and the physical manipulation of material in science education has become the target of a large number of researchers (proponents of the Cognitive Load Theory) in recent years. However, no research has been found examining the contribution of these elements of teaching to the…

An evaluation of the national curriculum by practitioners suggests that learning materials across school levels still overlap, are irrelevant to student development phases and competencies required, too challenging for students to learn, too broad in terms of topics, and lacking in depth. This evaluation encourages the needs for special studies…

Purpose and Method of Study: The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two approaches to professional development methodologies implemented in public schools. A quantitative, correlational research design was employed to determine whether the academic success in the core content areas of reading, writing, math and science could…

Research-based science curriculum has become a common means of supporting best practices in science teaching. However, despite one elementary school's adoption of commercially available science curriculum, the school's fifth-grade teacher selected only certain science modules for implementation in her classroom. The purpose of this narrative study…

This article attempts to address the challenge that preschool teachers face, when integrating a specific content area, science, with play. The study builds on the theoretical framework of Play-Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care (PRECEC), in which teaching, and play are understood as a mutual activity. In this mutual activity, teachers…

The NGSS [Next Generation Science Standards] reconceptualize science instruction by redefining the teacher as someone who helps students construct their own knowledge by "thinking like scientists" and engaging in discrete science practices. However, with STEM teachers in short supply and generalists often feeling underprepared to teach…

How anthropomorphic reasoning functions in scientific thinking has been a controversial topic. There is evidence it is problematic as well as evidence it can play productive roles, for scientists and for students. In science education, however, the prevailing view remains that it is an impediment. For this study, we have chosen examples of what we…

Despite the growing field of research focusing on the benefits of learning science in the outdoors where students have direct connections with the natural world, teachers report that challenges such as time and test preparation discourage outdoor science instruction. Additionally, many teachers feel ill-equipped and a lack of support from…

Background and purpose: As clear mechanisms for motivating and engaging teachers in learning and working collaboratively with colleagues are scarce, this study explored supportive conditions of promoting teacher professional development on inquiry-based science teaching in a Professional Learning Community (PLC) and examined how teachers'…

Dialogic, sense-making interactions are critical venues for language development and science learning, particularly for emergent multilingual students. Designing and facilitating such learning opportunities is pedagogically complex work and often requires significant shifts in practice. We report on a design study in which we partnered with 5th…

The authors describe the benefits of elementary school gardening experiences and offer suggestions on how to nurture positive environmental attitudes among children through garden-based learning activities.

This study aimed to explore possible correlations between elementary inservice teachers' (n=138) perceptions of science teaching constraints and affordances as well as their demographic information and science teaching self-efficacy and beliefs through the use of inferential statistics (Field, 2018; Riggs & Enochs, 1990). It also sought to…

The author has spent almost all his life working in and enthusing about primary science. From being a class teacher in the 1980s, to running Curioxity, a small hands-on science centre in Oxford, to lecturing trainee primary teachers at Oxford Brookes University and finally working with Science Oxford to help create their wonderful new Science…