Argues that, although some bilingual pupils may be at a disadvantage in understanding scientific language, there may be some circumstances where being bilingual is an advantage in understanding scientific language. Presents evidence of circumstances where being bilingual was an advantage and circumstances where it was a disadvantage in…

Presents evidence that suggests that upper elementary students can be taught about the particulate nature of matter in a meaningful way. Investigated the effects of lesson sequences on children's ability to apply a particulate understanding to chemical and physical phenomena and found conceptual gains on lesson specific phenomena. (Contains 15…

Summarizes ideas for new demonstrations, experiments, and science-in-society topics for teaching chemistry. (WRM)

Proposes four areas of emphasis for environmental education as a context for literacy: (1) basic science concepts; (2) respect for living things; (3) problem solving; and (4) environmental citizenship. (PVD)

This paper is about a longitudinal study to investigate how student-teachers developed understanding of some key ecological concepts during a teacher education programme. Another aim was to interpret the student-teachers' intentions in respect of the programme and to examine how these intentions influenced their learning. A group of students were…

A team of teachers, scientists, and high school students at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston has developed activities to teach concepts in learning through an inquiry-based laboratory method. The Learning Education and Research Network (LEARN) activities were field tested at the Society for Neuroscience Conference, in the…

Science educators face constant tradeoffs between allocating time to important topics and including more topics in the curriculum. We study 3,000 students experiencing 4 increasingly streamlined versions of a computer-enhanced middle school thermodynamics curriculum to investigate the impact of instructional time on knowledge integration.…

Bearing in mind students' misconceptions about basic concepts in astronomy, the present study conducted a series of constructivist activities aimed at changing future elementary and junior high school teachers' conceptions about the cause of seasonal changes, and several characteristics of the Sun-Earth-Moon relative movements like Moon phases,…

The studies reported in this paper are an initial effort to explore the applicability of computational models in introductory science learning. Two instructional interventions are described that use a molecular dynamics model embedded in a set of online learning activities with middle and high school students in 10 classrooms. The studies indicate…

Members of "Primary Science Review" Editorial Board explain what drew them to science. Alan Peacock, "PSR" Editor, emphasises the need to preserve children's sense of wonderment about the world. Robert Collins, a science educator in the Faculty of Education, University of Strathclyde, thinks people are "secret science…

Are children learning when they are "messing about" in sand or water? Is it science? In a workshop presented at the ASE Annual Meeting in Birmingham (January 2003), "Messy science: planning for learning in the foundation stage," delegates examined the nature of an early years curriculum through first-hand experience of a…

In this study we analysed the familiarity and understanding of 10 environmental concepts amongst Mexican and English school children (aged 7 to 9). The investigation considered the impact of the educational system and the school ethos on the formation of environmental concepts. Results reveal that in general, children of this age have a low to…

The relationship between the form and structure of plants and their gravitational environment is one of the most important teaching subjects of biological education. However, the teaching materials for the gravity effect have so long been concerned only with gravitropism, i.e. the short-time response of adjusting the orientation of seedling roots…

This paper describes some simple and rapid techniques for examining the growth responses of fungal hyphae cultivated on environmental gradients. The creation of such gradients using agar-based growth media in petri dishes is explained, along with recommendations for quantitative macroscopic and microscopic measurements. The intention is to provide…

This study investigates the potential of enhancing students' learning of difficult science concepts by exploring the interaction between teachers' four different instructional approaches and students' four different learning preference styles. Students' immediate performance and their retention for learning of buoyancy concepts serve to examine…