In December 2015, the media was full of Tim Peake and his adventures as he set off for the International Space Station as the first British ESA astronaut. The author set up a class blog as well as a Twitter account and created cross-curricular units of work around the "real" experience. Children really raised their game when they were…

Hempshill Hall Primary School is an urban school in Nottingham (U.K.), with almost 500 pupils. It is situated in a low-income area in the country, yet attracts many families from outside its school borders. It offers a broad curriculum that aims to be very child-led and engaging. However, it struggles to reach some of its less-engaged parents and…

In a kindergarten classroom, exclamations like "Oh no!" may be causes for concern. However, when the students in Mrs. Grabia's classroom shouted "Oh no!" and "Uh oh!" during an engineering-infused 5E lesson, it meant that a persistent little robot had pushed its way out of the fences they had created. It also meant…

The evaluation of promisingness is central to knowledge building and knowledge creation but remains largely unexplored. As part of a design-based research program to support promisingness judgments, the present study implemented an intervention in a sixth grade science class, with the goal of exploring the potential of promisingness judgments to…

Background: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a global network of data-sensing devices which pupils can access during science or other curriculum activities. Purpose: This article reports on a commissioned evaluation of a small-scale pilot project to explore the potential of the IoT combined with local sensors to enhance pupils' data interpretation…

Emerging technologies have been widely used in applications designed to increase potential for learning enhancement. This study develops a mobile application to integrate augmented reality (AR) functionality into physical puzzle-type games. In the application, learners see visualizations of three-dimensional (3D) dinosaurs and interact with…

With the growing adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards across the United States, elementary teachers are being called upon to incorporate engineering into their science instruction, creating a need for ways to help elementary teachers better understand what engineering is and how to accurately communicate it to students. The present…

Over the past 25 years, the Davidson College Physics Department has developed small computer programs called Physlets. These programs were written in Java and distributed as Java applets embedded in HTML pages. Physics teachers from around the world used Physlets to author interactive computer-based curricular materials for the teaching of…

The new National Curriculum for England requirements for primary science have created a few challenges and opportunities for primary schools. Implementation was not compulsory for year 6 (ages 10-11) until September 2015, but at the primary school in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets educators decided, as did many other primary schools, to start…

The Cams Hill Science Consortium (CHSC) is a group of teachers based in Hampshire who have been meeting regularly over a number of years to share outcomes from their classroom-based research into engaging children more productively in science. Led by Matthew Newberry, formerly of Cams Hill School in Fareham, the consortium has developed and…

When Chris Hatcher joined the Primary Evolution Project team at the University of Reading, his goal was to find effective strategies to teach evolution in a way that keeps children engaged and enthused. Hatcher has collaborated with colleagues at the University's Institute of Education to break the evolution unit down into distinct topics and…

Makerspaces provide a viable option for constructing and sharing knowledge in schools. Inherent in the designing, tinkering, and playing that learners engage in through making are competencies, such as the ability to create, problem solve, and innovate, decreed as critical by education policymakers. This paper summarizes results from a study in a…

This article is focused on the creation of a new scale for measuring preservice teachers' positive affect for science, the Preservice Elementary Teacher Affect Scale for Science (PETAS-S). This new instrument is designed specifically to measure the level of positive affect toward the subject of science in preservice elementary teachers.…

This research compared how the scientific literacy-related goals of the current Chinese and Finnish national science curricula at primary school level are actualised using a revised Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scientific literacy framework in the content analysis of the curricula. The content of the curricula focuses…

The purpose of this outreach program was to promote elementary school students' understanding of human physiology and exercise science. I conducted this outreach event for 421 pre-kindergarten through grade 5 students attending a Spanish-immersion elementary school within a large, urban public school district in Kentucky. To meet the needs of the…