A bunch of intrepid teachers spent a week in Iceland in a quest to learn more about the country's challenging landscape, by engaging in a unique and inspiring professional development opportunity to learn about innovative ways to teach science and mathematics outside of a classroom setting. A 2008 Ofsted report highlighted the benefits of learning…

Pedagogical competence and teaching efficacy significantly influence the quality of classroom science learning. Without applying pedagogical learning in realistic classroom environments, there is slight possibility that prospective teachers will increase their teaching confidence or develop understanding of how learners acquire and construct…

The author felt comfortably settled in her career. She had been teaching middle school science for seven years. She attended cutting-edge classes in college, received a master's degree in educational technology, earned a license in administration, and had attended a variety of classes and professional development workshops. Looking back, she…

The Chemistry Teaching Fellowship Program (CTFP) is offered to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at the University of Toronto as an opportunity to undertake curriculum development and chemistry education research. Projects are run with faculty supervision and focus on designing new laboratory activities, lectures, tutorials,…

Data from a recent study show that investing in science teachers' professional growth and teaching ability is a wise choice. However, the professional development must have the right content (the science discipline that teachers are actually teaching), at the right time (when they are assigned to teach that science discipline), and in a stable…

Within the field of science education, there remains little agreement as to the definition and characteristics of classroom inquiry. The emerging emphasis on scientific practices in science education reform discourse is underpinned by a need to better articulate the constituent elements of inquiry-based science. While a small number of…

The acronym STEM--the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and math--now a familiar term in education, is evolving into STEAM--STEM plus "A" for art. Educational researcher Martin Storksdieck's studies have shown that infusing art into STEM allows for "a different way of perceiving and knowing and dealing with the world, as a means to…

This article proposes strategies and practices that create rich discursive spaces for learning science in French immersion contexts. These strategies and practices are drawn from a variety of scholarly sources; here we adapt them to reading in the French immersion science classroom. The strategies and practices are designed for use in a…

Science programs provided for primary school have not always been successful. A major reason suggested is that some programs place demands on teachers which many teachers find difficult to meet and which give rise to concerns which restrict their development as teachers of science. Based on the work of the the Learning in Science Project…

The study reported in this article draws upon data collected for the programme "Increasing the Efficiency of Mathematics and Science instruction" (SINUS-Transfer), a professional development project in Germany. This programme's approach requires teachers to improve their teaching in a cooperative manner and with regard to pedagogical…

This paper focuses on the refinement and articulation of the invitational education concept to science teaching in the classroom, an approach consistent with the underlying philosophy of SCIS. The first section of the paper outlines the nature of invitations and disinvitations and describes the ability of teachers to send formal or informal…