Education for sustainability -- understood as efforts to equip people with the knowledge and skills necessary to make environmental, social and economic decisions that consider the needs of present and future generations -- has been incorporated in the official curriculum of Australia as a 'cross-curriculum priority'. This research sought to…

In this paper, we explore how an intentionally planned learning environment, rich with material resources and inquiry questioning practices, supported young children's engagement with an integrated science and mathematics learning experience. A practitioner-researcher, named 'Jenny', from an Australian early year learning centre, partnered with…

Trends in contemporary science education emphasise the benefits of out-of-school learning experiences to help schools link science with everyday life (Tho, Chan, & Yeung, 2015). With the help of state-of-the-art technology, mobile devices--particularly smartphones--have the ability to work as data-logging tools for students to perform…

Large gender gaps in performance on questions involving projectile motion have been observed at high school and university level, even amongst high-achieving students. This gap is particularly problematic because projectile motion is typically one of the first topics formally taught in physics, and this may give girls an inappropriately negative…

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…

Flotation is usually taught in Indian schools after students have been introduced to the concepts of mass, density, pressure, volume and buoyancy. This paper describes an attempt to teach the principle of flotation to a class of sixth graders--who had not yet been taught these concepts--so they could understand (and perhaps, arrive at) Archimedes'…

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…

Engaging middle school students in science continues to be a challenge in Australian schools. One initiative that has been tried in the senior years but is a more recent development in the middle years is the context-based approach. In this ethnographic study, we researched the teaching and learning transactions that occurred in one ninth grade…

The ability to represent the world like a scientist is difficult to teach; it is more than simply knowing the representations (e.g., graphs, words, equations and diagrams). For meaningful science learning to take place, consideration needs to be given to explicitly integrating representations into instructional methods, linked to the content, and…

Language is critical in the mediation of scientific reasoning, higher-order thinking and the development of scientific literacy. This study investigated how an exemplary primary science teacher scaffolds and supports students' reasoning during a Year 4 materials unit. Lessons captured on video, teacher and student interviews and micro-ethnographic…

Scientific visualisations such as computer-based animations and simulations are increasingly a feature of high school Science instruction. Visualisations are adopted enthusiastically by teachers and embraced by students, and there is good evidence that they are popular and well received. There is limited evidence, however, of how effective they…

Multimedia technologies such as Slowmation can be used to enhance curriculum resources and support innovative teaching methods. This case study research of a rural multi-aged class of primary science students included analyses of classroom captured video and interview data from a term long module on Astronomy. The study explored how students'…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how WebQuests can be used in physics classes for teaching specific concepts. The study had three stages. The first stage was to develop a WebQuest on Newton's second law. The second stage involved developing a lesson plan to implement the WebQuest in class. In the final stage, the WebQuest was…

This paper is a qualitative, practice based study describing the use of the Focus-Action-Reflection (FAR) Guide (Harrison & Treagust, 2000) to address the shortcomings of a pedagogical analogical model in Year 10 Science. The aim of this paper is to present my experience of the FAR Guide in relation to an analogical model that gave rise to…

Video-based classroom research is opening-up exciting new insights into how teachers generate productive opportunities for student engagement in quality learning. This research reveals the extent to which effective teachers draw on a range of multimodal representations of science phenomena and learners must use these as semiotic resources for…