On August 21, 2017, sky gazers all across North America will experience a total solar eclipse, arguably the most breathtaking of all astronomical phenomena. The August eclipse is an ideal astronomical event to observe with young children because it allows them to observe a powerful and easily accessible astronomical phenomenon. Observing…

Science and storytelling have an uneasy relationship. The scientific community frequently disdains stories, seeing them as polluting the purity of objective communication of data. In the peer-review process, for example, scientists who tell stories with their data are seen as "embellish[ing] and conceal[ing] information to evoke a response in…

Students in Mrs. Wilson's fourth-grade classroom watch in anticipation as the guest teacher, Ms. Davis, demonstrates binary signaling using a lightbulb that flashes when she holds it in her hands. She challenges them to guess what she is trying to "say" while making the lightbulb flash on and off, explaining that the lightbulb stands for…

The project "Multimedia in science teaching: five years of research and teaching in Portugal" was successful in featuring the national research on multimedia in science education and in providing the community with a simple reference tool--a repository of open access scientific texts. The current work aims to describe the theoretical…

Climate change is complex, requiring critical thinking on both local and global scales. Its effects vary dramatically around the world and require new strategies to help students grasp its complexity, scale, and interrelatedness. This article describes a project to help biology students think critically about climate change from a global…

This article describes a reverse-engineering project where female students take a part a hair dryer--giving them an opportunity to see the many different kinds of engineering disciplines involved in making a hairdryer and that they work together. Mechanical Engineer, Lyn Gome, describes her experience leading a group of middle school girls through…

Experimental and investigative work has been an integral element in the teaching of science in schools for many years. Although students have always been taught to work safely, there is now a more general requirement that they will be taught about health and safety and how it should be implemented. That is, they must understand something of the…

Despite the expressed need for high-quality science education, very little research has been conducted on what middle school science learning opportunities look like in practice. This study was conducted in support of "Strengthening Science Education in California", a research, policy, and communications initiative. Partners in this…

This paper explores one district's attempt to implement a blended science and English Language Development (ELD) elementary program, designed to provide English language learners opportunities to develop proficiency in English through participation in inquiry-based science. This process resulted in blended program that utilized a combined…

Teachers are often confined to their classrooms with limited or no time to share with colleagues the difficulties they face, their concerns, and their successful initiatives. This leads to a situation where they end up teaching in ways and approaches they believe to be best with no chance to know how others may be approaching similar difficulties…

This article provides some tips for success in facilitating teamwork. Working collaboratively is common in science and the functioning of teams has a large impact on both the implementation of a research project and student satisfaction with the experience. The strategies are divided into what can be done to minimize problems from the start and…

Undergraduate college "science partners" provided content knowledge and a supportive atmosphere for K-5 teachers in a university-school professional development partnership program in science instruction. The Elementary Science Education Partners program, a Local Systemic Change initiative supported by the National Science Foundation,…

Suggests using the planetarium as an educational resource for all ages. Discusses various planetarium teaching techniques and planetarium programs (with objectives) at Ball State University. They include programs for school children, college students, and the general public. (DH)

This book is intended to offer college faculty members the insights of the development of reasoning movement that enlighten physics educators in the late 1970s and led to a variety of college programs directed at improving the reasoning patterns used by college students. While the original materials were directed at physics concepts, they quickly…

Inspired by the Salters Approach (UK) and ChemCom (USA), units for a new curriculum for chemistry teaching are being developed in Germany based on theories of scientific literacy, motivation, and situated learning. The curriculum follows a context-based approach. Rather than using the structure of the discipline, it generates basic chemical…