In the "Solar Sprint" activity, students design, test, and race a solar-powered car built with Legos. The use of ratios is incorporated to simulate the actual work of scientists and engineers. This method encourages fourth-grade students to think about multiple variables and stimulates their curiosity when an activity doesn't come out as…

This article describes an innovative approach to developing preservice elementary science teachers' classroom confidence and skills. Based on lesson study approaches, preservice candidates designed and taught integrated science-mathematics lessons during the semester before their student teaching. Working in teams, candidates designed and taught a…

This article describes a lesson that focuses on students' difficulties with linear measurement while addressing national mathematics and science standards. (Contains 6 figures.)

Research into classroom interactions has shown that talk that promotes reasoning can help children in their learning of science. Such talk can only be generated when teachers are willing to take a dialogic approach that is stimulating and provides opportunities for children to articulate their ideas. This research set out to determine whether the…

This paper describes a comprehensive set of studies designed to assess the potential for commercial reading programs to teach reading in science. Specific questions focus on the proportion of selections in the programs that contain science and the amount of science that is in those selections, on the genres in which the science is portrayed, on…

To address the confusion resulting from difficulties with proportional reasoning among preservice physical science students, a cube-assembly activity was used to bring a sense of concreteness to abstract ideas. The activity took students from the concrete step of assembling cubes of various sizes and directly measuring their properties to slightly…

This present study aimed to investigate the effects of the asynchronous web-based "General Teaching Methods" course conducted based on direct or indirect instructional methods on pre-service teachers' achievement, metacognition, and attitudes towards web-based course. Two groups, a total of 63 third grade elementary science and mathematics…

This study compares 3rd-grade elementary students' gain and retention of science vocabulary over time in two different classes--"connected science instruction" versus "direct instruction." Data analysis yielded that students who received connected science instruction showed less gain in science knowledge in the short term compared to students who…

In this theoretical article the authors discuss the role of technology tools in supporting students' argument construction within the context of middle and high school science. In the first part of the article they focus on the theoretical underpinnings for studying argumentation in school science and report on the difficulties associated with…

Advances in digital video technology create opportunities for more detailed qualitative analyses of actual teaching practice in science and other subject areas. User-friendly digital cameras and highly developed, flexible video-analysis software programs have made the tasks of video capture, editing, transcription, and subsequent data analysis…

The National Research Council's "National Science Education Standards" call for science education to be "developmentally appropriate, interesting, and relevant to students' lives, emphasize student understanding through inquiry, and be connected with other school subjects." This description captures the three major trends in science education…

This study assessed the influence of training in, and use of, metacognitive strategies on the development of prospective elementary teachers' views of nature of science (NOS). Participants were 49 students (92% female) enrolled in two sections of an elementary science methods course. The sections were randomly assigned to an intervention group and…

This quasi-experimental study investigates how the classroom learning environment changed after inquiry-based activities were introduced and student questioning was encouraged. Three science teachers and three classes of fifth graders (n = 92) participated in this study. The analysis of covariance reveals that although the experimental group…

In this study, five elementary teachers and a university researcher developed and implemented problem-based learning (PBL) experiences in the context of science teaching and learning. Collaborative inquiry was adopted as a methodology, while a variety of qualitative methods were used to examine the engagement and development of teachers'…

This textbook is the first book in the series Pathways in Science. It is planned to meet the needs of young children who are "looking about," touching, manipulating, experimenting, and asking questions. The stories are for the most part actual records of the experiences of real children. The material represents a wide range of interests,…