Teaching ethics in elementary science may seem abstract or simply another topic to add to an already rigorous curriculum. However, it is an integral part of science and engineering instruction and a natural extension of what elementary educators do every day. Teachers help students develop ethical practices or "habits of mind" when they:…

The author created a project aimed to develop and implement the assessment of working scientifically (WS) skills at Victoria Park Primary School. The author had previously identified a gap in the curriculum coverage and assessment of WS skills and his goal was to address the lack of provision for assessing children's WS skills and raise the…

Co-teaching is a progressive approach to teaching using an inclusive model where all students experience the same lesson while receiving individualized resources to meet personal learning needs. The purpose of this case study was to examine one school district's transition from resource rooms to inclusion using the co-teaching model. The middle…

The paper reports a study that used a Bernsteinian analysis in order to investigate the association between higher primary science curriculum and social equity in four contrasting socioeconomic contexts: British Columbia (Canada), Singapore, South Africa and Kenya. The official science curriculum of each jurisdiction was analysed in terms of…

This study presents an in-depth exploration of the types of discursive functions of teacher questioning and the potential cognitive correspondences embedded in the questioning. The participants were a science teacher and his class of 26 sixth-grade students who were engaged in an immersion science inquiry activity. The major data source was a…

Teachers' accurate understanding of Inquiry-Based Science Teaching (IBST) is crucial for the proper enactment of this pedagogical approach. In this research, a qualitative case study design was used to explore and interpret pre-service teachers' understanding of IBST at the conclusion of their three-year primary diploma at a university in…

A "digital explanation" is a science learning task where learners explain science content to non-expert others, in this case, the learners are primary preservice teachers [PST] in a science methods class. In the task, PST are assigned a prompt based on science content from the New South Wales K-6 syllabus and generate or source multiple…

In this response paper, we reflect upon the contributions of Gallard Martínez, Pitts, Brkich, and Ramos de Robles (this issue) in their manuscript "How does one recognize contextual mitigating factors (CMFs) as a basis to understand and arrive at better approaches to research designs" (EJ1257238) and elaborate the ways in which we work…

What better way to engage fifth-grade students in science and engineering practices than to use paper airplanes to encourage them to question, explore, create, and test designs! This multi-day unit draws from a fourth-grade curriculum (Pearson 2012) aligned with the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) used in…

This paper tells about the mental model of prospective scholars on the topic of temperature and heat. The purpose of this research is to improve students' mental model by using problem based learning (PBL) model. The number of samples in the study amounted to 72 students with two different classes. The results of the study showed that, (1) the…

The author has spent almost all his life working in and enthusing about primary science. From being a class teacher in the 1980s, to running Curioxity, a small hands-on science centre in Oxford, to lecturing trainee primary teachers at Oxford Brookes University and finally working with Science Oxford to help create their wonderful new Science…

This study aims to analyse the effects of science teaching practices supported by Web 2.0 tools on prospective elementary school teachers' perceptions of self-efficacy beliefs in using Web 2.0 tools. The study was conducted in pre test-post test quasi-experimental design with no control group, and it was supported with qualitative data. The…

Following a learning experience with one of her Year 2 students, whose extreme and challenging behavior required extra support from a teaching assistant (TA) but who loved practical hands-on science days and investigations, it occurred to the author that there must be hundreds of children and TAs all over the UK facing challenging dilemmas every…

Classroom discussion can help young children monitor their thinking and share their ideas in order to be understood (Donovan and Bransford 2005). Particularly for children who are not yet reading and writing independently, opportunities to discuss ideas can support engagement and sensemaking during science instruction (e.g., Wright and Gotwals…

We conducted a multi-year study of specialization in elementary mathematics and/or science, using data drawn from a local sample of teachers and a nationwide sample of principals. Using the theory of planned behavior, we compare and contrast teacher and principal views and decision-making processes related to elementary content specialization…