This study developed a local climate change curriculum that incorporates generative learning strategies and emphasizes the creation of visually engaging educational content. The curriculum's impact was assessed by examining generative learning through recall and knowledge transfer, as well as declarative knowledge across elementary students with…

Reforming instruction is challenging. In this comparative case study of 12 school districts, we investigated the dilemmas that emerged for system leaders as they engaged in system building for elementary science and the approaches leaders took in managing them. We found that system leaders' efforts to manage their environments contributed to the…

Becoming proficient in scientific discourse such as argumentation or developing explanations can be challenging for students, including neurodivergent students (e.g., autistic students, students with learning disabilities, students with ADHD). Students need to practice developing arguments and explanations as well as sharing their conclusions with…

This study aimed to investigate grade-7 students' negotiation during the engineering design process regarding the students' status of argumentation training. The participants were 33 students studying at a public urban middle school in Turkey. They worked in small groups on four engineering design tasks about electricity and light. Data were…

Background: Over the past three decades, researchers have increasingly advocated for pedagogical practices that privilege exploration, collaboration, problem-solving, and hands-on projects in K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.). Many researchers have studied the efficacy of these instructional practices, but there has…

Teacher noticing of student thinking represents a key aspect of teacher expertise as it informs teachers' actions 'on the fly' during a lesson. In science and mathematics education, teacher noticing has been conceptualised as being driven by attending to and making sense of student thinking. A range of models of noticing developed in professional…

In this article, I argue for expanding what "counts" as evidence of content learning in the assessment of English learners (ELs) and their peers in the content areas. ELs bring expansive meaning-making resources to content classrooms that are valuable assets for meeting the ambitious learning goals of the latest K-12 education reform.…

Inquiry-based science instruction has been proposed as an optimal learning environment for language-integrated teaching. While its potential for developing both content knowledge and language skills has been shown for students with limited language proficiency, research focusing on mainstream classrooms has mainly considered domain-specific…

Education for Sustainability (EfS) is crucial for changes in environmental behaviour (EB), and little is known about the EB of primary school teachers tasked with teaching EfS. This study sought to better understand the EB of pre-service primary science teachers. EB was qualitatively evaluated, characterising teachers' personal environmental…

It might sound to some like an impossible target to give children 22 hours of scientific enquiry by Christmas, but the current COVID-19 pandemic has already demonstrated its capacity to make the impossible happen and to upturn so many of the assumptions that have shaped the way people teach and learn. Children can reach 22 hours of enquiry if…

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 explores the recontextualization of science in the Malawi Standard 6 syllabus for science and technology. It illustrates how relations of power and social control are enacted, using Bernstein's concepts of classification and vertical and horizontal discourse. The syllabus incorporates five 'disciplines': science, technology, health,…

The paper describes our research aimed to verify the durability of pupils' initial ideas and concepts on the issue of acids and bases. First, we mapped their existence among primary school pupils and then compared them with the ideas of secondary and university educated adults. It has been confirmed that some initial ideas are very lasting and are…

Studies have shown that inadequate definitions of scientific concepts could complicate the learning of science and could prevent students from understanding the definitions of scientific concepts. The article provides a framework for defining scientific concepts in primary, secondary, and university education by proposing teachers draw attention…

The United States must grow its science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) trained workforce in order to fill the jobs projected to be in demand. One of the ways in which this can be done is to tap into the vast population of minorities and women who are underrepresented in the STEM fields. The United States has been looking for ways…