Educators expect that students be able to make informed decisions about science-related problems in their everyday lives. Engaging science in such problems often entails evaluating available evidence for given arguments. This study explores how students use inscriptions as evidence to argue about socioscientific issues. Fifth- and sixth-grade…

Science Hunters is a UK outreach project that uses "Minecraft" (a computer game that allows children to build with a wide range of blocks) to engage children with science. Sessions are based on a range of science topics and include practical activities. A new topic, on bioluminescence, was designed in collaboration with staff and…

This article describes the ways transformative curriculum making led to the creation of an immersive urban classroom ecosystem installation in a second-grade classroom. Both teachers and students engaged in science-based learning experiences through this immersive installation. Students' sensory learning experiences yielded a robust ecological…

Teachers' subject matter knowledge is a substantive component of the teaching-learning process. For a teacher to be able to transform and integrate into the classroom all the knowledge and experience they have acquired in the course of the professional activity, it is first necessary to acquire a deep and solid knowledge of the matter. The aim of…

A set of core ideas in the life sciences revolve around genetics, variation, and inheritance. While the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS; NGSS Lead States 2013) emphasize teaching and learning about these concepts across K-12 grades, it is critical for early learners to begin to develop understanding of them. By the end of fifth…

The aim of this study was to determine if there is a connection between the inquiry-based teaching of science in primary school and the development of the students' learning to learn competence. The research involved 333 fourth-grade students at primary schools in Croatia. The experimental research with parallel groups included a number of…

In primary science education, we face an ongoing concern of helping classroom teachers overcome negative associations with science content, teaching and learning. These associations can often impact how they view the value of science in their classroom teaching and impede the development of innovative teaching practice. This research effort…

This study aims to investigate the effects of Science Technology Education Math (STEM) practices on academic achievement and motivations of students in the 5th grade of middle school in "Exploring and Knowing the World of Living Creatures" section in Science lecture. The study was designed in a semi-experimental pattern with pre-test…

This study describes the design and implementation of a science outreach program (elementary; 2nd-5th) and its associated student outcomes. Key features of the program include: (a) phenomenon-based, NGSS-aligned curriculum designed by science education experts and influenced by educational, sociocultural, and cognitive science theories, (b) active…

This research aims to reveal the misconceptions of prospective primary school teachers on the fundamental physics concepts such as force, frictional force, work, conservation of energy, mechanical energy, kinetic energy, potential energy, energy stored in springs on the topic of "Force and Motion" and to assess the misconceptions based…

Pupils often find the concepts of heat and temperature difficult to understand and differentiate. The authors believe that an image-to-writing approach can help pupils learn these two abstract concepts -- an approach that uses a series of guided enquiry activities involving heat and temperature. The basic premise is that pupils produce images to…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the problems and suggestions of the elementary science teachers having students with special needs in the inclusive education applications. The present study is a descriptive study which determines the opinions of elementary science teachers regarding inclusive education. Thirty-seven in-service science…

Studies of scientific practice demonstrate that the development of scientific models is an enactive and emergent process (e.g., Pickering 1995; Chandrasekharan and Nersessian 2017). Scientists make meaning through processes such as perspective taking, finding patterns, and following intuitions. In this paper, we focus on how a group of fourth…

The inclusion of "nature of science" (NOS) in science education has for a long time been regarded as crucial. There is, however, a lack of research on appropriate NOS aspects for different educational levels. An even more neglected area of research is that focusing on teachers' perspectives on NOS teaching at different levels. The aim of…

Some teachers are confident in teaching science and some feel that they are less so. The author sees her role as Science Leader as being to support, engage and inspire staff to deliver an exciting curriculum that gets children to ask questions, build confidence to have a go…and have a go again. In this article, the author talks about using…