Gamified simulations, integrating gameplay into education, cater to younger learners' digital preferences and align with Next Generation Science Standards. Current virtual modules focus on advanced high school classes, leaving a gap for middle school students. This study investigated the impact of substituting recitations in a 6th-grade ecology…

Studies of both professional science practice and children's science learning show that care is not merely ancillary to disciplinary work but a core and generative constituent of science practice. In science education research, however, students' care is often overlooked. In this paper, we describe the expression of care across two STEM classrooms…

Attending to emotion in science classrooms can expand the range of resources valued for science learning, and it can offer insights into students' investigations. However, research that characterizes emotion as a part of disciplinary science learning is relatively nascent. In response, we explore the dynamic relationships between feelings,…

This article demonstrates how the authors used a 5E lesson about food webs as a context to embed speaking and listening standards. This 5E lesson partially addresses 5-LS2-1 in the "Next Generation Science Standards" and focuses primarily on predator/prey relationships. Future lessons focus on decomposition and other relationships. To…

The present study explored the impacts of a contextualised outdoor science curriculum on "what" and "how" elementary students learn when immersed in the local contexts in which natural phenomena occur. We conducted 63 individual interviews with fifth- and sixth-graders (between 10 and 12 years old) living in the inner city of…

The "Next Generation Science Standards" call for engaging K-12 students in three-dimensional learning, in which students make sense of phenomena or solve problems by simultaneously using science and engineering practices (SEPs), crosscutting concepts (CCCs), and disciplinary core ideas (DCIs). Decades of education research suggest…

This research aimed to develop science teaching media in the form of learning applications that use the help of iSpring Suite. The development of ecosystem material science learning applications is made to maximize the use of smartphones owned by students and reduce the various negative impacts of using Android in learning. The Research and…

Even though there are numerous studies on environmental education in the literature, they are limited to investigate the effects of stories. In this context, this research aimed to investigate the views of fifth grade Turkish students concerning environmental problems through storytelling. In accordance with this aim, action research has carried…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine playful practices in the science video composition of a fourth-grader. Design/methodology/approach: With an analytic interest in "chasing the theory of muchness" (Thiel, 2015a) that describes distinctive moments of affective energies in playful learning, the authors explored a child's…

The article presents the results of an exploratory-qualitative study about children´s conceptions of ecology in relation to media messages. The objective of the study has been to identify the role of ecologism and environmental campaigns on ecology conceptions of 105 6th grade children, age 10-12, from an educational institution in Bogota,…

This study investigates children's perceptions of environmental change and their connection to nature in Mexico's Mediterranean region, an area of global ecological significance. We used a convergent mixed methods design to analyze data from 392 fourth through sixth graders from urban, peri-urban, and rural schools. Integrating quantitative and…

Over the last two decades, there has been an increasing focus on spatial technologies in teaching and learning, revealing the potential to support new forms of youth sensemaking across varied settings and modalities. Recent scholarship has shown the possibilities of participatory digital mapping technologies, enabling young people to collect data…

Models and modeling are central to both scientific literacy and practices as demonstrated by the Next Generation Science Standards. Through a design-based research framework, we developed a model-based assessment (MBA) and associated rubric as tools for teachers to understand and support students in their conceptualization of the flow of energy…

This study aimed to develop a valid and reliable multiple-choice achievement test for the subject area of ecology. The study was conducted within the framework of exploratory sequential design based on mixed research methods, and the study group consisted of a total of 250 middle school students studying at the sixth and seventh grade level. In…

Students in grades 3-5 are undergoing significant cognitive growth and beginning to understand what fairness and equity mean in a diverse and interconnected world. "Modern Math Tasks to Provoke Transformational Thinking" presents carefully crafted tasks that nurture multi-disciplinary literacies, including ecological and cultural…