The demand for improving student interest in science has increased efforts toward teaching Einstein's theory of general relativity in schools. Research has already shown that teaching Einsteinian gravity at the secondary level is feasible, however, appropriate resources must be readily available for science teachers to make Einsteinian gravity…

The natural sciences, by their very nature, are based on the exploration of the physical world, and digital mobile devices are considered appropriate to support this exploration (Suárez et al., 2018) since they offer the tools that make this investigation more accessible but also ubiquitous (Crompton et al., 2017). Inquiry-based learning is a…

Water is a special substance. Not only do humans rely on water for survival, but it is also fascinating to play with and makes a great topic to investigate. Many simple investigations can be done with water, at home or at school, to guide children's science learning. This article describes a sequence of online learning experiences that were set…

Life would not be possible without plants. Plants supply food to many organisms (including people), produce oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide from the air, provide products for human use, and homes for many other living things. It is not surprising, therefore, that plant growth is a familiar topic in the primary school science curriculum. This paper…

The Australian Science Teachers Association offers an innovative international professional development program for science teachers called the Science Teachers Exchange -- Japan. The program offers Australian and Japanese teachers an opportunity to travel to the corresponding country, allowing the teachers to grow in their knowledge of the…

In this paper, we report on a case study of how three teachers personalised learning in science through supporting a group of Year 8 students to engage in individual inquiry projects. The case study demonstrated how heavily transmissive teaching can be avoided by restructuring classes to optimise student group and individual work and timely…

The Australian Curriculum: Science for Year 5 includes "recognising that the colour of an object depends on the properties of the object and the color of the light source". This article shows how much more can be done with color in the science laboratory. Activities include using a prism to explore white light, using a hand lens to…

New and emerging digital technologies are making an impact on how we practice science, and this has implications on how we teach science. We introduce the concept of the Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) as used in the research environment and describe how we have implemented this as a tool for providing undergraduate science students with an…

William Henry Bragg moved from Cambridge in Britain to South Australia to take up a professorship at the University of Adelaide in 1885. He brought with him a broad interest in many areas of physics, but when Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays in the 1890s, Bragg's interest was stimulated. William's Australian-born son, Lawrence (WL Bragg), began…

Year 11 chemistry students from three schools in the Sunshine Coast Region of Education Queensland carried out a choice of five experiments aligned with their school curriculum on campus at the University of the Sunshine Coast and in their own school classrooms. Significant improvements in science learning were observed in student post-test quiz…

The development of students' reasoning and argumentation skills in school science is currently attracting strong research interest. In this paper we report on findings where we aimed to investigate student learning on the topic of motion when students, guided by their teacher, responded to a sequence of representational challenges in which their…

Pseudoscience is a ubiquitous aspect of popular culture which constitutes a direct challenge to science, and by association, to science education. With the exception of politically influential pseudosciences trying to impose themselves on official curricula such as creationism, science education authorities and professional organisations seem…

A practical exercise for developing a simple cost-effective solar ultraviolet radiation dosimeter is presented for use by middle school science students. Specifically, this exercise investigates a series of experiments utilising the historical blue print reaction, combining ammonium iron citrate and potassium hexacyanoferrate to develop an…

Capturing students' interest in science at the junior levels is crucial to not only improving the uptake of science at senior levels but to promoting science literacy in all students in order to prepare them for a society that is very science and technologically driven. This paper presents nanotechnology as an emerging science that is both factual…