The "Primary SPACE Project Research Report: Sound" (Watt and Russell, 1990) provides interesting reading relating to primary-aged children's concepts of sound. It reveals a range of children's views on how sound is made, how sounds are heard and how sound travels. While some children are shown to have knowledge that sounds travel and are…

Scientific literacy is an important skill for students' success, given the characteristics of today's society. However, not all students have a natural predisposition toward science, chemistry in particular. Considering the relevance of transdisciplinary learning, schools should foster the scientific abilities for which students may have less…

The goal of this dissertation project is to use embodied learning--an emerging approach to supporting student engagement--as a focal point to demonstrate how a multidimensional engagement framework can help us understand, evaluate, and design for new ways of learning. The project is situated in the context of third-grade students learning about…

Most young children love a good song and dance, an enticing story, and gorgeous illustrations. How could this staple of the early childhood classroom--music and literature--access children's ideas about physical science? How can young children communicate their knowledge of unseen science concepts that are not easily represented in pictures? These…

Ask many elementary school teachers or principals, and they will say that science and music are not the top priority in their classrooms. Teachers need to know "how" they can incorporate the necessary mathematics and reading goals and objectives while still engaging students in the critical and aesthetic thinking developed through…