For a long time within the history of education, it has been assumed that science classrooms are homogeneous spaces, constituted with the prevailing conception that only scientific culture can be represented. At the same time, Latin America is characterized by being a region with enormous biological and cultural diversity, with an invaluable…

Educators constantly hear the mantras "develop relationships with students" or "add a personal touch"? They know they will be better teachers if they connect with their students, but how can they if their students come from very different backgrounds than they do? How do educators find common ground? The common ground is the…

One challenge of teaching science is getting students to communicate as scientists do. Scientists employ many different forms of communication as they develop and pass on information to others. Unfortunately, in many classrooms, student communication about science concepts is limited to filling in information on worksheets, finishing…

Nearly 10% of American students are identified as "Limited English Proficient" (NCELA 2011). To serve this diverse population of English Language Learners (ELLs), teachers need proven instructional strategies. One prevalent approach is sheltered instruction, defined as "teaching content to English learners in strategic ways that…

This article shows how various dialogic discourse strategies were used in read-alouds of English science information books in a 2nd-grade bilingual classroom. Using a variety of discursive strategies, Ibett encouraged her Spanish-speaking students to provide explanations and reasoning related to science ideas. Similarly, she used intertextual…

Conceptual change instruction recognizes that students bring personal, or naive, conceptions to the classroom, which they use to explain their world, interpret situations, and create meaning (Driver et al. 2007). But what happens when students' personal conceptions are inconsistent with experts' views of scientific knowledge? Even after direct…

The difficulty of using insights from educational research and scholarship to inform the design of subject teaching is widely acknowledged. In this article, we present an example of the design of a short science teaching intervention to illustrate one approach to using insights from research to inform the design of teaching. After outlining the…

In this article, the author, at the very foundation of her teaching, was trying to establish an environment that would promote inquiry and create an investigative mindset in her first-grader students. First, she assessed her first-grade students' thinking about scientists by asking them to draw and write about what a scientist looks like and does.…

During the period 1984-1986, over 30 teachers from the Yorkshire (England) region have worked in collaboration with the Children's Learning in Science Project (CLIS) developing and testing teaching schemes in the areas of energy, particle theory, and plant nutrition. The project is based upon the constructivist approach to teaching. The purpose of…

During the period 1984-1986, over 30 teachers from the Yorkshire (England) region have worked in collaboration with the Children's Learning in Science Project (CLIS) developing and testing teaching schemes in the areas of energy, particle theory, and plant nutrition. The project is based upon the constructivist approach to teaching. This booklet…

The science discourse of young children is a means by which children can pose and try to answer difficult questions about their world. This paper describes through excerpts from transcripts of audiotapes and fieldnotes of science talks, how young children talk about science, and how they use metaphors and analogies to develop theories about…