Bronwen Cowie

A critical stocktake of practice identifies key factors for environmental education programmes as being resource provision, professional development, time for planning and action, funding, overcrowded school curricula, and the non-mandatory status of environmental education.

This article reports on the analysis of a videotape of four children participating in a group mathematical task. The authors discuss the ways that the context, social organisation, and resources of the task shaped the children's approach to the task, and the implications of this for teachers.

This article illustrates the potential of using multiple means to help express and develop ideas.

Here, the focus is on ways to build continuity, coherence, and connections in learning over time.

This article focuses on planning as a strategy for enhancing teacher pedagogical content knowledge.

Teachers are keen to adopt new ICTs to support student learning. This article looks at one example—interactive whiteboards. Skilfully used by the teacher, sequences of magnified images wowed students and engaged their interest. The students enjoyed—and learnt from—interacting with the whiteboard and creating animations of their own.

This is one teacher’s story of how connecting her science teaching to the cultural background of her Māori students increased their motivation and enthusiasm. By linking a topic on forest ecology with the students’ existing interest in the school’s new tuata (carved ceremonial post), she was able to develop a collaborative inquiry-based project with her students that had them asking “Is it science today?”

When a teacher let her Years 4 and 5 class chose their own science topic to study, they settled on—what else?—farting. This article shows how letting students pursue their own interests led them to real science learning.

When their funds of knowledge and experiences from home and the community are connected to their school learning, students' learning is supported. In this study teachers used "home learning books" to invite contributions from home into science teaching and learning in the classroom. The flow of knowledge between home and school engaged students and whānau and enriched the science learning.

In the last 10 years subsidised laptops have been rolled out to classes at all levels and ICT has become more common in the classroom. How are teachers using ICT to teach junior science and what is supporting them to do this?