At the end of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign during World War 1, Lance Corporal William Scurry saved thousands of lives with his one simple invention. As the ANZAC soldiers prepared to withdraw from the disastrous 9-monthlong Gallipoli campaign, Scurry came up with the idea of setting up a large battery of rifles that would discharge automatically…

Being scientifically literate is an essential twenty-first century skill for every individual navigating today's complex world and science inquiry skills are seen as an important capability of a scientific literate person. However, teaching science inquiry skills requires specific competences and is often challenging for teachers. Understanding…

In this paper, we discuss what creativity may look like in the science classroom and what we learnt from teaching with student-generated diagrams to promote creativity in Year 7 Science lessons. As a result of this study, most students were able to communicate a deeper understanding of complex phenomena and were able to apply this knowledge both…

The Australian Curriculum Science has "Patterns, Order and Organisation" as one of its six Key Ideas. In the biological sciences, the structural patterns revealed by observing living things are used to order and organise them in a hierarchical system of binomial nomenclature, in which living things have a generic name and a specific…

This paper details a digital technology solution to a problem that arose during a science lesson in an early years class. The teacher used the opportunity to enable the children to apply their knowledge and skills of a software application developed in a recent ICT class. Using the age-appropriate app, the students could communicate their learning…

The use of the valence-shell electron-pair repulsion (VSEPR) model is essential for understanding aspects of bonding, molecular dipoles, inorganic complex ions, isomerization and stereochemistry, the lock-and-key mechanism for enzyme activity, and many other ideas. This paper describes how different approaches can be used to help students learn…

This paper examines the use of social media as a collaborative and engagement tool for participants in a middle school science research project conducted over a three-year period. Sky Stories is a learning initiative that employs a blend of Indigenous and Western knowledge of astronomy to engage Year 5-8 middle school students in investigative…

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…

Most international curricula require students to develop conceptual and procedural understandings along with developing an understanding about the nature of science. Moreover, science education endeavours to produce scientifically literate citizens capable of making informed decisions about the social-scientific issues in their everyday lives;…

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…

If you think physics is only for older children, think again. Much of the playtime of young children is filled with exploring--and wondering about and informally investigating--the way objects, especially toys, move. How forces affect objects, including: change in position, motion, and shape are fundamental to the big ideas in physics. This…

Constructing Direct Current (DC) electric circuits is simple and engaging for primary students, but that is not all there is to learning about electricity. Mandatory learning in the Australian Curriculum: Science (ACARA, 2018) expects Year 6 students to explain some of the processes underlying electric circuits. The abstract nature of key…

We suggest that two interpretations of time -- linear time and cyclical time -- that complement each other when planning lessons, can be used in both Western and Indigenous science. The idea of time in the Australian Curriculum: Science is examined and seen to be primarily associated with the Western science tradition, so it is suggested that the…

In this article I present a practical model that primary and secondary teachers might use to help students explore the intrinsic connections between science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The analogy of a Russian nesting doll (matryoshka doll) can be used to stimulate classroom conversations about the nature of STEM and lead to…