Background: Students experience higher-order thinking skills by finding ways to solve the problem, debugging errors while applying the solution, and testing the solution in programming. However, the inability to create schemas that will characterise programming structures is one of the difficulties during this process. Objectives: This study aimed…

In school-based research, isolating the potential effects of a single variable while attempting to maintain typical classroom routines is always a challenge. Unfortunately, the challenges and methodological approaches to overcoming them are often only shallowly reported, perhaps due to word limits or assumptions that those details are irrelevant…

The study aims to examine fourth-grade private and public-school students' images of the science learning environment using their drawings. The survey was conducted in the 2017-2018 academic year, and a descriptive survey model was used. Participant group of this study consist of 357 fourth-grade students. In this study, data were collected by…

Elasticity, the capacity for students to explore or investigate their own questions of interest during or after teacher-directed events in the classroom, is highly beneficial for students in terms of their retention and deeper understanding of the content. An elastic environment is child-centered and inquiry-based. An inelastic environment…

Sixty-eight percent of fourth-grade public school students in the United States performed below the National Assessment of Educational Progress proficient level on the 2022 reading assessment, yet Massachusetts fourth-grade students demonstrated better reading outcomes. The problem addressed through this study was a lack of knowledge regarding the…

Background: In the study conducted with primary school students, the differences between STEM and STEAM activities and environmental awareness and environmental aesthetics were examined. Purpose: This study aims to examine the effects of traditional methods, STEM, and STEAM-based activities on primary school fourth-grade students' environmental…

This self-study describes my year-long investigation to create caring community in my fourth-grade classroom. An introspective and dialogic pedagogy of intention-setting revealed students' experiences of taken-for-granted uncaring. This window into students' experiences afforded me opportunities to model care. Intentionality, dialogue, and…

The current study examines the effects of the sociocultural context of primary school reading among Arabic- and English-speaking students in the UAE. Using a sample of 16,391 fourth graders (English: n = 10,507; Arabic: n = 5,884) from the 2016 Process in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), results revealed that while early language…

As teachers gain experience, their assessment knowledge base, personal beliefs, and the educational context come together to shape their identity as an assessor. This study sought to add to the body of research by highlighting and describing, through the lens of the teacher, how beliefs and context influence teachers' assessment literacy in…

This article considers how teachers' encounters with a newly built learning space are complicit in the practices performed in that space. It builds on previous research into the relationship between learning spaces and pedagogical change by highlighting the acoustic aspects and how they were perceived by teachers in a primary school. Over two…

There was insufficient understanding of the instructional and leadership practices that led to increased reading achievement of African students by fourth grade in a high-performing Title 1 elementary school in a suburban school district in Texas. Despite an achievement gap, the fourth-grade African American students outperformed their European…

Narratives, or stories, are used every day by people as a way of making sense of and communicating events in the world. Narratives can be highly useful as a learning tool in science education. Though research on narrative-based pedagogy in science education and communication is very common, most of that research was done in formal settings. Our…

The current evidence base for outdoor and nature-based education in a context of education for sustainability is limited and unrepresentative of the realities of small, urban schools, which tend to be characterised by small outdoor spaces devoid of nature. To address this research gap, we carried out two studies in Malta, as an example of a…

Although visual aids are widely considered a valuable source of scaffolding, the nature and active utilization of these aids in current science classrooms are not well understood. This qualitative study explores interaction in the teaching of concepts related to evolution, with a specific focus on a teacher's use of different visual support…

Previous research has repeatedly confirmed that students with special educational needs (SEN) are generally less accepted by their peers. Although inclusive teaching strategies and classroom characteristics are frequently hypothesised to improve students' social participation, empirical evidence is scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is…