This article contends that in England, where the status of science as a core subject has been weakened due to a focus on high-stakes accountability testing, a global learning approach reignites science as a subject that can nurture active global citizens. It argues that teacher knowledge and teachers' personal and professional commitment to global…

Argumentation research often addresses the nature of argumentation as a complex set of procedures that can aid learning of complex scientific knowledge and practices. Thus, studies might look at transfer of knowledge and processes to specific science domains or to other types of procedural knowledge, such as teacher implementation in the…

This column provides background science information for elementary teachers. This month's issue discusses the science behind self-driving cars, but first explains how a car "with" a driver works.

In this article, Megan Shenton, a final-year trainee teacher at Nottinghom Trent University, describes using "The Big Question" in her science teaching in a move away from objectives. The Big Question is an innovative pedagogical choice, where instead of implementing a learning objective, a question is posed at the start of the session…

This paper, presented at the 2017 meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), summarizes findings from efforts to elicit pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) from elementary teachers. The paper focuses on teachers' knowledge for teaching about the small particle model of matter and is a product of the Knowledge…

In this project, a method that had been developed using a single setup was employed to correctly measure the tilt of the Earth's axis on 21 June 2015. The method is an easily comprehensible and applicable technique that can be used in elementary science and astronomy courses and understood by students of every age group.

Bill Robertson is the author of the NSTA Press book series, "Stop Faking It! Finally Understanding Science So You Can Teach It." In this month's issue, Robertson describes and explains the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was discussed on "The Big Bang Theory," the lead character in…

Purpose and Method of Study: The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two approaches to professional development methodologies implemented in public schools. A quantitative, correlational research design was employed to determine whether the academic success in the core content areas of reading, writing, math and science could…

Scientific enquiry is a creative process, commonly beginning with a question or problem, then generating a tentative answer or solution, and testing it. In the classroom, the question, perhaps in the form of a problem, is generally given, ready-made, to students by the teachers. With the aim of providing young students with a fuller experience of…

This article outlines research that explored how pre-service science education teachers drafted multimodal artifacts, namely graphic novelettes (short versions of graphic novels) to help explain science concepts to varying grade levels. The research methodology and collaboration of the project, which included both Science Education and English…

Engineering is an intriguing way for students to connect the design process with their knowledge of science (NRC 2012). This article describes the "Engineering a Pancake Recipe" design process which was created to make the structure and properties of matter more meaningful for fifth grade students. The whole pancake recipe engineering…

Elementary students are expected to use various features of informational texts to build knowledge in the content areas. In science informational texts, scientific metaphors are commonly used to make sense of complex and invisible processes. Although elementary students may be familiar with literary metaphors as used in narratives, they may be…

Purpose: This study examines how different purposes can support teachers in their work with progressions as a part of a teaching sequences in science in primary school. Design/Method: The study was carried out in two classes working with inquiry and the events that took place in the classroom were filmed. In the study, we have chosen to use the…

This study investigates whether elementary science teachers participating in a four-week professional development workshop develop new understandings about classroom discourse and whether they are able to implement strategies toward teaching science as student-to-student discourse. Perspectives and the extent of teacher use of discourse strategies…

In this article, Robin James describes the Sand Yacht Challenge. The race took place on sand between small, wind-powered land yachts made by groups of children from four local schools. The project provided a term of collaborative opportunities at the designing and testing stage, followed by a competition when the students raced them. It was…