Science curriculum – Teaching & Learning Research Initiative

Citizen scientists in the classroom: Investigating the role of online citizen science in primary school science education

1. Introduction This project aimed to assess the impact of online citizen science (OCS) participation on the science education of primary school children in New Zealand. Four exploratory cases were used to examine the nature and impact of embedding OCS projects that use web-based online tools within primary classroom environments. Findings provide key insights into primary teachers’ perception of OCS. They offer initial insights into how teachers embed OCS in a classroom environment, and why this improves science learning aptitudes, inquisitiveness, and capabilities in primary school children. They also show how successfully embedding OCS projects in education is affected by the project context, human computer interaction (HCI), and dissemination of results,

Beyond play: Learning through science investigation

Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative for providing the funding for this project and Dr Rose Hipkins for her support as our monitor. We are grateful for the guidance from Professor Robin Millar who gave us his thoughts, time, and the confidence to take on this project. Our sincere thanks to the schools, teachers, and students without whom this research would not have had much to say. Kia ora tatou. Aims and background The science learning area of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007) requires students to learn about “features of scientific knowledge and the processes by which it is developed” and

CoRe: A way to build pedagogical content knowledge for beginning teachers

Research has shown that one of the factors which enables teachers to be effective is their rich pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Beginning teachers need support to develop this PCK and recent research in the field has proposed a conceptual tool known as “content representations”, or CoRes, as a model for doing this. The study reported here brought together science and technology experts in content and pedagogy, early career secondary teachers, and researchers to design a CoRe to assist development of teacher PCK. The study then researched the early career teachers’ use of the CoRe in their planning and delivery of a unit in their classrooms to examine the effect of the