The aim of this study is to determine the effect of formative assessment based learning on students' conceptual understanding levels regarding basic astronomical concepts. The study was conducted in a public primary school with 24 5th graders. The study group was applied a 3 phased teaching process based on formative assessment for the duration of…

Formative assessments serve to engage students in active sense-making, making them critical tools for both teachers and students. Though formative assessments may be an informal mode of assessing, they are one of the most important, especially when teaching science. As a subject, teaching science does not have the same kind of beginning-middle-end…

This study aims to introduce inquiry-based play activities and to examine their effectiveness on young children's conceptual understanding of the shape of the Earth and the day-night cycle. The inquiry-based play activities for preschool children were designed to support children to learn the concepts of the shape of the Earth and the day-night…

In 1972, more than two hundred Black music educators convened an impromptu, offsite protest meeting during the 23rd Convention of the Music Educators National Conference in response to the dearth of Black music and musicians represented on the program and the near exclusion of Black musicians on the Jazz Night program. The unprecedented and…

Both children and adults struggle to explain the cause of the day/night cycle and the seasons (Schoon 1995). Early elementary students may not be developmentally ready to explain that patterns of day and night are caused by Earth's rotation on its axis, or that the seasons are caused by Earth's tilted axis as the planet revolves around the Sun.…

This study presents an analysis of the incommensurability about the representations or models elaborated by children from an Indigenous community within three areas or cultural domains, namely, the ethnic, daily (domestic), and school domains and their implications in relation to science education. The children belong to an Indigenous Nahuatl…

American teenagers are chronically sleep deprived. As children enter puberty, physiological changes delay the onset of sleep and make it more difficult to wake up early in the morning. By the end of middle school, there is a large disconnect between biological sleep patterns and early-morning school schedules: one study found that students lose as…

Teaching by night and reflecting on a subject by day is the way that Salman Khan sees education evolving in the age of online lectures. Khan believes he is onto something in what he styles the "flipped classroom." In Khan's view, there is no need for students to be divided into grades by age. Instead, they should learn at their own pace, moving on…

Changing practices in schools is a very complex endeavor. This paper is about new practices we prompted to foster collaboration and critical reasoning in science classrooms: the presentation of pictures representing different perspectives, small group synchronous argumentation, and moderation of synchronous argumentation. A CSCL tool helped in…

The study investigated the mental models of primary school children related to the day/night cycle. Semi-structure interviews were conducted with 40 fourth-grade and 40 sixth-grade children. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data indicated that the majority of the children were classified as having geocentric models. The results also…

Endogenous biological clocks are widespread regulators of behavior and physiology, allowing for a more efficient allocation of efforts and resources over the course of a day. The extent that different processes are regulated by circadian oscillators, however, is not fully understood. We investigated the role of the circadian clock on short-term…

The purpose of this study was to explore Chinese and Australian primary children's conceptual understandings of the Earth. The research was conducted in the interpretive paradigm and was designed to be descriptive with comparative and cross sectional elements. Participants were Year 3 and Year 6 children from three schools in Hunan Province,…

Present research aims to determine the effect of science activities on concept development of preschool period age 5-6 children groups. Parallel to research objective, qualitative research pattern has been the selected method. Study group comprises of collectively 48 children from 5-6 age group attending to a private education institution in city…

GeoJourney is an interdisciplinary field trip in geology, Native American studies, and environmental studies designed for introductory-level undergraduates. The program travels 23,345 kilometers by van to national parks, industrial sites, museums, and Indian reservations in 24 of the United States. During the day, students carry out hands-on…

In at least 44 states across the country, students are logging in to learn at all times of the day and night--accessing courses they might otherwise be unable to take, interacting with students they might otherwise never know, and working with highly qualified teachers they otherwise could not access. In these and countless other ways, online…