Background: Surprisingly little is known from a research perspective about the conceptual development of children's understanding of rainbows and rainbow formation. Yet research has shown that teachers tend to overestimate the proportion of students' correct answers in this domain. The present cross-sectional study aims to rectify this…

Great science teachers recognise the importance of providing children with practical, real-life experiences to develop their understanding of, and enthusiasm for, this truly inspirational subject. However, Gareth Metcalfe believes that the process by which children understand and remember their scientific experiences can be enriched. This article…

Experimentation skills are a central component of scientific thinking, and many studies have investigated whether and when primary-school children develop adequate experimentation strategies. However, the answers to these questions vary substantially depending on the type of task that is used: while discovery tasks, which require children to…

The aim of this study is to reveal the students' and pre-service teachers' understanding of light, sight and related concepts at different educational levels, from primary to higher education. A cross-sectional approach was used since the participants were of different age and educational level. The sample of this study consisted of 30 eighth…

While research has shown that elementary (K-5) students are capable of engaging in the scientific practice of explanation construction, commonly-used elementary science curriculum materials may not always afford them opportunities to do so. As a result, elementary teachers must often adapt their science curriculum materials to better support…

This study examined the connections elementary preservice science teachers made among various aspects of nature of science (NOS). Totally, 45 preservice science teachers who were enrolled in the Laboratory Application in Science II course participated in the study. The course provided meaningful and practical inquiry-based experiences, as well as…

This study had the goal of investigating the association among elementary students' (N = 276) science and math beliefs and the relationship between those beliefs and teachers' ratings of mathematical and science understanding. Results of structural path analysis indicate that in science, intellectual risk-taking (IRT; the willingness to share…

In the last three decades, the constructivist approach has been the dominant ideology in the field of educational research. The aim of this study is to explore the effect of constructivist science teaching on the students' understanding about matter, and to compare the effectiveness of a constructivist approach over traditional teaching methods.…

By providing a variety of strategies, scenarios, examples of student writing, classroom video clips from across all science content areas, rubrics, and guidelines for designing assessment items, "Supporting Grade 5-8 Students in Constructing Explanations in Science: The Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning Framework for Talk and Writing" provides…

This study investigated students' understanding of a virtual infectious disease in relation to their understanding of natural infectious diseases. Two sixth-grade classrooms of students between the ages of 10 and 12 (46 students) took part in a participatory simulation of a virtual infectious disease, which was integrated into their science…

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental study which examined the effectiveness of concept mapping as a revision tool in enhancing pupils' examination performances in primary science. The research objective seeks to determine whether there are significant differences in achievement between the concept mapping and traditional method of revision…

Examines the misconceptions of children as indicative of imaginative and perceptive thinking. Anecdotes that illustrate the split between realist and relationalist thinking, and the confusion between fact and metaphor are presented as citations from literary works. (BC)

A number of alternative frameworks used by 84 students (ages 12-16) in interpreting phenomena concerned with fluid pressure were identified during interviews with these students. Methodology employed, tasks used to obtain data, an analysis of the results, and implications for physics teaching are included. (JN)

Children in grades two and five explained such weather phenomena as wind, clouds, thunder, lightning, rain, snow, and rainbows during interviews. Results indicate that most students in both grades were at a stage of nonreligious finalism and do not use true causality in explanations. Implications for teaching are discussed. (DH)

Currently, there is much research work investigating the teaching and learning of plant nutrition in several different countries. This article briefly summarizes the findings of some of this work, including the work undertaken by the Children's Learning in Science Project. (Author)