The study provides evidence concerning elementary school children's ability to conduct a scientific investigation. Two hundred and fifty sixth-grade students and 248 fourth-grade students were administered a test, and based on their performance, they were classified into high-ability and low-ability students. The sample of this study was…

Several studies found that direct instruction and task structuring can effectively promote children's ability to design unconfounded experiments. The present study examined whether the impact of these interventions extends to other scientific reasoning skills by comparing the inquiry activities of 55 fifth-graders randomly assigned to one of…

Betty's Brain is a computer-based learning environment that capitalizes on the social aspects of learning. In Betty's Brain, students instruct a character called a Teachable Agent (TA) which can reason based on how it is taught. Two studies demonstrate the "protege effect": students make greater effort to learn for their TAs than they do…

This article sets out to examine how school science activities can encourage students' participation while supporting a specific science content. One ordinary class with 12-year-old students was chosen and their regular classroom work was studied without intervention and with a minimum of interference. Lessons were video filmed, transcribed and…