This article describes how using a variety of differentiation strategies, such as listening to stories, visualizing scenarios, and performing tactile activities, can help fourth-grade students to conceive of and express examples of energy transfer.

Background: To support collaborative drawing, it is essential to investigate how students make collaborative drawings and how these contribute to elaborating their ideas. This study examines how 5th and 6th grade students' group drawings contributed to increased levels of explanations of their drawings about sound transmission. Methods: We…

Visualizations are commonly used in educational materials, however not all visualizations are equally effective at promoting learning. Prior research has supported the idea that both perceptually rich and bland visualizations are beneficial for learning and generalization. We investigated whether the perceptual richness of a life cycle diagram…

Sound is an interesting topic for physics lessons at all ages. However, it is difficult to illustrate this ubiquitous phenomenon and many models do not adequately represent the properties of sound and thus promote unwanted conceptions. The experiment presented here avoids this by visualising sound itself with the help of the schlieren technique.…

This technology report presents the main features of a free digital educational tool which aims to introduce middle school level students to the comprehension of the particulate nature of matter in the three states (i.e., solid, liquid, and gas) and during phase transitions. This digital tool is available and is freely accessible online. Its…

Scientific modeling (SM) is a core practice of science and an important component of scientific literacy. Supporting students in developing the competence to construct, use, evaluate, and revise models is hence of particular relevance. While research has shown that spatial visualization (SV), a core component of spatial ability, is correlated with…

Learning about components and processes of complex biological systems is challenging and requires abstraction through mediational tools such as text, visuals, models and visualisation experiences. The 'systems concepts' necessitate building coherent relations and anticipating consequences, requiring greater mediational support. This article…

This article explores how creative visual imagination and creative thinking can help children to construct mental models of space. A mixed-method study, integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches and involving 98 five-year-old children (54 girls and 44 boys) demonstrated that creative visual imagination, rather than creative thinking, is…

Student-generated drawing is a useful strategy to construct students' scientific ideas. For exploring ways to support student-generated drawing, we focused on the perspective of 'Norms' -- shared behaviour patterns desirable in a community. We investigated what norms were formed and how they emerged when students made drawings to explain…

This study investigated the effect of interactive computer simulation-supported inquiry on South African grade 8 learners' comprehension of atoms and molecular structures. Two sample groups of 34 learners per sample group were used, one acting as a control group who were exposed to a teacher-directed pedagogy while the experimental group used…

Engaging students in conversations around science and engineering design can be challenging. Sparking such conversations during field trips at an interactive science center has additional challenges. First, students vary considerably in age from day to day: science center employees might work with first graders one day and sixth graders the next.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate not only the effectiveness of dynamic versus static visualizations on learning star motions but also the influence of students' spatial abilities with these two types of visualizations on their learning. We assigned 155 fifth-grade students to either a dynamic or a static condition. We used a science…

This research aimed to examine the effects of science-on-web learning media on grade 8 students' learning independency levels and learning outcomes of 'excretion system' topic. Through a quasi-experimental research method within non-equivalent control group design, 70 grade 8 students drawn from Tanjungpinang, Indonesia participated in the study.…

Even though many educators are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), science often does not receive the attention in elementary school that it should. One way to ensure that elementary school children have the science experiences they need and deserve is to use it as a context to teach…

The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain students' achievements in solving context-based gas exercises comprising the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels of chemical concepts. The influence of specific variables, such as interest in learning, formal-reasoning abilities, and visualisation abilities, is a significant factor that should…