Signing on to take part in Bush Blitz TeachLive (BBTL) is an easy decision for many teacher applicants. The opportunity to be a scientist's field-assistant and to beam the experience back to students in the classroom is an enticing one. Yet the reality of an expedition often far exceeds the initial expectation. This article describes the…

In 2020, just as COVID-19 reached Australian shores, a group of enthusiastic teachers had been anticipating their imminent Bush Blitz TeachLive expedition to Rungulla National Park to take part in Australia's largest biodiversity survey. It took two years for their trip to eventuate, but it was worth the wait. Three candidates from the deferred…

In 2022, an ASTA working group researched the career life cycle of a science teacher from preservice to retirement in order to better support professional learning programs for its members. The project resulted in the production of a framework showing the relationships between individual teacher contexts in their personal and workplace life and…

Science curriculum and pedagogy offer ideal avenues for teaching young people the critical thinking skills they need to live in a post-truth world. Drawing on the theory of epistemic cognition, we present a selection of research-based pedagogies that have been shown to be effective in developing school students' understanding of knowledge and how…

The recent inclusion of the "Depth Study" in the New South Wales (NSW) Years 11 and 12 science curriculum has generally been well received by secondary science education leaders. The Depth Study is designed to present an opportunity for students to engage in inquiry-based learning (IBL). However, the integration of this new curriculum…

Classroom teaching can be a "wild" experience, but in March three teachers stepped out of the classroom to take on the Tassie wilderness and deliver their students a different kind of lesson. Joining forces with a team of scientists, the teachers delved into the important task of surveying Australia's biodiversity at the Stony Head…

It takes a special kind of teacher to enlist in a Bush Blitz TeachLive expedition: camping; long days hiking or wading through marshland; catching arachnids, lizards and insects; and all the while managing to remotely teach students back in the classroom. The latest instalment of Bush Blitz TeachLive sent five Northern Territorian teachers to…

Language is a key part of learning science. Many students for whom English is an additional language or dialect (EAL) encounter difficulties learning science because of their lack of proficiency in English (McCallum & Miller, 2013). These students make up approximately a quarter of the population of many Australian schools (ACARA, 2020). This…

Australian science teachers are asked to involve their students in the scientific processes of inquiry and investigation. The abilities needed for scientific problem-solving ("doing") and the capacity to reflect on the process of problem-solving at a meta level ("understanding") are defined as scientific reasoning competencies…

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a requirement of school science education in Australia. Numerous student-centred strategies have been referred to as inquiry-based teaching (IBT), resulting in a lack of understanding of the exact nature of inquiry-based science learning within the science teaching profession. This article describes three essential…

The Australian Science Teachers Association offers an innovative international professional development program for science teachers called the Science Teachers Exchange -- Japan. The program offers Australian and Japanese teachers an opportunity to travel to the corresponding country, allowing the teachers to grow in their knowledge of the…

This article illustrates an enhancement and lesson-delivery process used to engage classroom students in primary school science lessons. In the enhancement process, university educators and pre-service teachers collaborated with local experts to prepare lessons based in local or regional contexts. Lessons were designed to enable students to think…

Connecting schools and teachers with industry and community partners is essential for improving STEM outcomes for students. To address this, two pilot 'STEM Hubs' were created for schools in Brisbane and Townsville that connected secondary STEM teachers with local industry and community partners. The collaboration afforded innovative STEM units to…

Through the science curriculum, teachers can use students' passion for screen content to motivate them to explore innovative new ways to bring their science learning to life through video making. Communicating science concepts using multimodal literacies can be a particularly powerful way for students to learn about science, especially when they…

This article presents an instructional strategy called Premise-Reasoning- Outcome (PRO) designed to support students in the construction of scientific explanations. Informed by the philosophy of science and linguistic studies of science, the PRO strategy involves identifying three components of a scientific explanation: (i) premise--an accepted…