While helping students develop informed views about nature of scientific inquiry (VNOSI) has been emphasised in science education, little is known regarding students' current VNOSI at a certain grade level and whether there was evidence of higher attainment of VNOSI in students in higher grades as compared to lower grades? The purpose of this…

The NASPE standards for physical education programs stress that students should not only achieve competence in physical skills but also acquire and integrate the underlying concepts that can lead to effective movement. Physical educators can successfully embed these underlying concepts into the daily skill instruction and guided practice in their…

Introduces the notion of culturalizing science instruction--making the values enacted in science teaching and the resulting contexts explicit. In contrast to the possibility of value-free instruction implied in the philosophy level of Baptiste's typology, a premise of culturalizing science instruction is that curriculum is taught in a way that…

Very little has been published about the amount and nature science teaching in Australian primary schools and that which has is largely based on written surveys completed by teachers and principals at a sample of schools. This study was designed to follow these surveys into the classroom. I observed fourteen science lessons, interviewed twelve…

Good resources for teaching elementary science content abound, making science more accessible to everyone and helping teachers enhance their presentation of science topics. However, there is one important aspect of science that sometimes proves a bit more difficult to teach: introducing students to the idea of the nature of science. Nature of…

Describes and evaluates an elementary science methods course in which the nature of science and scientific inquiry are embedded and explicitly taught. As a result of the course, incoming conceptions of science as primarily a body of knowledge changed to a more appropriate, blended view of science as a body of knowledge generated through the active…

This book seeks to improve the way science is taught in the elementary school. It suggests that there are three main contradictions that make it difficult for teachers and students to engage in meaningful activities from which understandings result. The central issues in this book are framed in terms of three dichotomies that lead to tensions…

Developing an understanding of the nature of science (NOS) among students is one of the goals of scientific literacy. According to research, K-12 students do not have contemporary views of NOS and teachers' views of NOS generally are not consistent as well. This paper presents a study investigating the effects of different types of NOS…

Examines how, through discourse processes, a third grade teacher and her students came to situationally define science in their classroom. Uses a discourse analytical approach to examine the classroom members' experimentation logic, their explanations and scientific decisions, and their accounts of events. (Contains 82 references.) (Author/YDS)

This study was designed to examine preservice elementary teachers' beliefs about the nature of science, document changes in these beliefs over the duration of a year-long science methods course and embedded teaching practicum, and assess the impact of these beliefs on their classroom practice (Bright, 2001). The pre-test and post-test case study…

Reflects on the idea of a person being constructed through his actions, and the role of the teacher in enabling such actions. Argues that the way a teacher shapes the classroom is, in effect, a lens through which children can be viewed and visions of the educational process both shape and are shaped by the teacher. (Author/WRM)

Explores an approach to autobiographical research based on a notion of "outlaw genre" autobiography, referred to as "biomythography". Describes the use of photo essays to learn about prospective elementary teachers' stories of science and science education. Calls for an examination of hegemonies extending from students' personal histories as…

Elementary teachers must make thousands of decisions about their teaching practices every day. From whom should they first seek a response? Who should be asked the next question? Will the students be in groups for this activity or do it alone? While many science educators have clear visions of strategies they should employ in science classrooms,…

The purpose of this article is to report findings from an ethnographic study that focused on the co-development of science literacy and academic identity formulation within a third-grade classroom. Our theoretical framework draws from sociocultural theory and studies of scientific literacy. Through analysis of classroom discourse, we identified…

This case study focused on a preservice teachers' (Morgan) efforts to explicitly emphasize nature of science (NOS) elements in her first-grade internship classroom. The study assessed the change in first grade students' views of the inferential, tentative, and creative NOS as a result of the explicit instruction. Morgan held appropriate views of…