Will spring be early next year? This is a question the authors ponder each fall as they prepare for a yearlong citizen science project with kindergartners. Citizen science projects naturally promote the development of science and engineering practices. These projects can be integrated at any grade level and aligned to meet other content areas as…

Learn to use inquiry-based practice to inspire young minds through science. This book gives educators a solid guide for using research-based principles of inquiry to help children explore their world. With real-life examples and information on facilitating and guiding children, you will be able to engage and maximize STEM learning. Web content and…

Research globally has shown that many children lose interest in science towards the end of primary school and throughout the post-primary phase. This article explores children's experience and views in Irish schools that have adopted innovative practices that aim to empower, excite and inspire children in science. One of these focuses on explicit…

Global progress has arisen from scientific advances and we currently live in the age of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); science as a way of increasing the knowledge base, technology as a means of manifesting the science, engineering as a way of building and creating with it, and mathematics to devise the language we use…

Elementary science experiences help develop students' views of science and scientific interests. As a result, teachers have been charged with the task of inspiring, cultivating, recruiting, and training the scientists needed to create tomorrow's innovations and solve future problems (Business Roundtable 2005). Who will these future…

Students' beliefs that success in science depends on exceptional talent negatively impact their motivation to learn. For example, such beliefs have been shown to be a major factor steering students away from taking science and math courses in high school and college. In the present study, we tested a novel story-based instruction that models how…

How can educators provide children with a genuine experience of carrying out an extended scientific investigation? And can teachers change the perception of what it means to be a scientist? These were key questions that lay behind "The Human Condition" project, an initiative funded by the Primary Science Teaching Trust to explore a new…

This paper reports on an attempt to investigate Turkish primary school students' interest in science by using their self-generated questions. We investigated students' interest in science by analyzing 1704 self-generated science-related questions. Among them, 826 questions were submitted to a popular science magazine called Science and Children.…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the potential of using stories about diverse scientists to broaden primary students' images of scientists and scientific work. Stories featuring scientists from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds (i.e., physical ability, gender, ethnicity) were presented to 11 grade one students over a 15-week…

Who hasn't heard of Einstein? Science educators everywhere are familiar with Einstein's genius and general theory of relativity. Students easily recognize Einstein's image by his white flyaway hair and bushy mustache. It is well known that Einstein was a brilliant physicist and an abstract thinker who often used his creativity and imagination in…

After "A Nation at Risk" was released, the state of American education was widely discussed, and not just by educators. The 1980s produced a number of reports on the status of science education that complained of declining science and mathematics achievement, falling enrollment in the subjects, and a shortage of qualified teachers. All the…

In an integrated science/language arts/technology unit called "How Scientists Learn," students researched famous scientists from the past and cutting-edge modern-day scientists. Using biography trade books and the internet, students collected and recorded data on charts, summarized important information, and inferred meaning from text. Then they…

"Science Related to Life" textbooks are written to supply the need of elementary science teachers for textbooks that can be used independently by pupils. Throughout the series the author has kept in mind the aims of elementary science, as recognized by modern courses of study, namely: (1) to develop in pupils an interest in the natural…