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…

Owing to the popularity of tablet computers and smart phones, e-books have become an important medium for both formal and informal learning. However, conventional e-books are mainly designed to provide information in the form of multimedia, implying that students spend most of their time memorizing and comprehending what they read from e-books,…

Facilitating students' deep-strategy behaviors and positive learning performances of science inquiry is an important and challenging educational issue. In this study, a contextual science inquiry approach is proposed for developing a 3D experiential game to cope with this problem. To evaluate the impacts of the game on students' science learning…

Creative thinking is important to scientists and engineers as they frame their work and engage in the practices of their fields. Elementary-age children need opportunities to think about and develop an idea from its inception through to its conclusion to expand their thinking and engage in scientific processes. Generating and expanding on ideas…

Initiatives to integrate engineering design in the elementary science classroom have become increasingly evident in both national reform documents and classroom practice. Missing from these efforts is a purposeful attempt to capture students' designerly thinking and dialogues as they engage in the process. The purpose of this study was to…

This study examines the interactions between problem solving and conceptual change in an elementary science class where students build system dynamic models as a form of problem representations. Through mostly qualitative findings, we illustrate the interplay of three emerging intervening conditions (epistemological belief, structural knowledge…

The focus of this paper is on selected recent South African research studies that have explored efforts to promote the discussion, writing, and arguing aspects of scientific literacy in primary and middle schools, particularly amongst second-language learners. These studies reveal improvements in the participants' abilities to both use the…

This study describes strategies fifth- and sixth-grade children used to solve the problem of determining how to control a "vehicle" they "drove" by pressing particular keys on a computer. The problem involves identifying or discovering a set of cause-effect relationships. (Author/JN)

Describes a study which sought to identify development patterns related to the acquisition of proportional reasoning in two areas, namely electricity and chemical solutions. Results from children ages 9-11 indicated that development of understanding of chemical solutions was asymmetric whereas it was symmetrical with electricity. Includes sample…

Reviews the neural modeling principles of learning, perception, cognition, and motor control, discusses their applications to sensory-motor problem solving, and explores possible relationships between that pattern of problem solving and aspects of higher order formal operational problem solving. Cites implications for science education. (ML)

Discussed is the teaching method called the learning cycle and how it can be incorporated into science activities. Included are examples of how teachers and students can use the learning cycle to produce instructional materials. (KR)

Discusses the advantages of using discrepant events in elementary school science classrooms in terms of motivation and problem solving skills. Describes the materials, procedures, and reasons behind five discrepant activities. (YP)

Designed to support the premise that many important clues to the solution of the problem of teaching thinking skills in science are contained in the science process skill literature, this paper synthesizes research related to the teaching of science process skills. Studies which evaluate the effect of the new science curricula are described.…

This paper discusses using technology education in the elementary school to encourage innovation and adaptation, technological literacy, and creative problem solving. Technology education is seen based on hands-on activities where pupils make things and become familiar with their technological environment. The hands-on activity should evolve like…

In order to investigate the nature of students' prior knowledge of current electricity and how they applied their knowledge to different problems, 5 middle school science teachers and 11 elementary school teachers were given a written test that required them to: (1) predict what happens to the brightness of a bulb if a change is made to the…