In this paper, the relation between the functions of metacognition in social context and responsive teaching was studied with the aim of fostering students’ constructions of science concepts based on social context. We analyzed the relationship between the interaction of individual metacognition with social metacognition based on the theory advocated by Inoguchi, Goto and Wada (2018) and the functions of “responsive teaching” advocated by Wood (2018) in an elementary school science classroom. The results of the study showed that interaction of individual metacognition with social metacognition occurred through the function of responsive teaching, and that children became able to construct scientific concepts more effectively by reiterating regulation of cognition.

We have been conducting research aimed at reorganizing life science education in elementary and secondary school into a more competence-based style. In the field of life science, recently the amount of new knowledge, including that of molecular biology, has greatly increased. Further, the fusion with other fields such as engineering progresses, and surrounding circumstances are changing rapidly. The content handled in the life domain has also changed during the course of study revision, and in upper secondary school biology classes, content such as biotechnology, which is required under the new criteria, was included in the curriculum. In this research, based on these developments, we extracted the abilities to be trained in the life science education in kindergarten, elementary school, lower secondary school, and upper secondary school, with reference to the basic form in medical education. Furthermore, we integrated and organized the qualities and abilities similarly extracted in other areas of science and consolidated them into four domains of competence to nurture students in primary and secondary science education. Based on the domain of competence organized here, we devised and practiced learning activities in upper secondary school biology classes with the aim of nurturing the competencies that life science education should bear.

In this research, we aimed to develop a lesson design with teaching strategies that incorporate a model of collaborative knowledge building in an elementary school science class. As a teaching strategy of collaborative interactions, Gillies (2014) pointed out teachers’ dialogic skills, which are comprised of Dialogic Talk, Accountable Talk, Exploratory Talk, and Dialogic Teaching. We verified the relationship between teachers’ dialogic skills and the phase shift in the collaborative knowledge building model (Stahl, 2000). The lesson we practiced was a unit of elementary school grade 3 science called “Properties of Light”. A teaching strategy of interactive learning was taken up in the phase formation and transition of the collaborative knowledge building model, and from the results it became clear that the interactive learning teaching strategy was effective for collaborative knowledge building.

The main purpose of this study is to analyze elementary school students’ recognitions of the morphology of insects as drawn from the ventral side in the 2nd grade (before learning) and the 3rd grade (after learning), and to examine the perspective to foster children’s learning and skills development in science. The main findings of this study were as follows: 1) more than 60% of the 2nd grade students and more than 80% of the 3rd grade students could distinguish between insects and other living things (among nine kinds) ; and 2) none of the 2nd grade students and about 20% of the 3rd grade students divided morphology of six kinds of insects into three segments (head, thoracic, and abdomen) correctly, and the correct answer rates for each insect were less than 10% for the 2nd grade students and less than 65% among the 3rd grade students. The morphology of the six kinds of insects studied can be correctly classified into 4 types at the head, 9 types at the thoracic and 3 types at the abdomen; therefore, based on these results, we suggested that improvement in the teaching and learning strategies about the morphology of insects is necessary.

The ability of promoting active learning in the classroom is one of the qualities and skills required by the new generation of teachers. In this study, we developed and evaluated a manga case-study method learning program to foster the ability to lead students toward cooperative learning for use in teacher-training courses. In order to clarify the learning outcomes and learning status of the manga case-study method learning program, the following five items were investigated for the 86 university students aspiring to become elementary school teachers. With regard to learning outcomes, there was (1) a questionnaire survey on confidence and interest in proactive and interactive lessons; (2) a manga test to measure ability to judge cooperative learning; and (3) a questionnaire survey on the need for cooperative learning and free-form descriptions regarding awareness of cooperative learning. With regard to learning status, there was (4) a questionnaire survey on participation in and impressions of the teaching program; and (5) a questionnaire survey on the use of preparatory and revision materials and their actual use. As for the results of evaluation, while the actual use of revision materials is an issue, a significantly positive evaluation was obtained in all of the other areas. This suggested that case-method learning programs using manga are effective.

The purpose of this study was to develop and review the effectiveness of a lesson that introduces arguments comprised of claims, evidence, and reasoning, to third grade elementary school children studying science for the first time. A lesson was designed for the “Function of Wind and Force of Rubber” unit. Following studies of Matano and Kamiyama (2017), and Matano, Kamiyama, and Yamamoto (2018), four teaching strategies were incorporated into the unit’s preparatory phase and six strategies were incorporated into the unit’s implementation phase. In the unit, children described arguments three times. The first time, lead sentences were presented on a worksheet that children filled in with the argumentative content while the entire class confirmed the claim, evidence, and reasoning. The second time, lead sentences were presented on a worksheet and only the reasoning was confirmed by the entire class. The third time, the lead sentences were removed, and children described each component freely. Each argument from the three trials was scored based on constituent elements such as claim, evidence, and reasoning from two viewpoints: “presence/absence of description” and “correctness of contents.” All 28 children had perfect scores regarding “presence/absence of description,” with the exception of 6 children during the second trial and 1 child in the third. Despite gradually decreasing lead sentence provision and teacher involvement at each trial, about 70% of children could develop an argument by the third trial when evaluated on “correctness of contents.” The results showed that the lesson plan was highly effective in teaching children how to construct claim-, evidence-, and reasoning-based arguments.

We designed a science lesson based on the frameworks of formative assessment in order to develop pupils’ competency and skills. The frameworks were based on the proposal of FAST (2008). The frameworks are 1) Learning Progressions, 2) Learning Goals and Criteria for Success, 3) Descriptive Feedback, 4) Self- and Peer- Assessment, 5) Collaboration. The lesson unit we designed was “Nutrition of plants and pathway of water”. The results indicated that: (1) Teachers supported pupils’ learning via feedback based on learning progressions and learning goals. (2) Pupils reached the learning goals through self- and peer-assessment. (3) Pupils constructed their knowledge about the plants. The proposal of FAST (2008) was thus confirmed to be useful for designing effective science lessons.

Curriculum and lessons focusing on developing “competencies“ are attracting international attention. In Japan, concrete strategies such as curriculum management and lesson design are necessary to implement concrete classes to develop competencies, which is an urgent issue. This paper is oriented toward developing competencies and clarifies their characteristics as a foundation of the German integrated science NaWi project based on the contextual approach. We present information to consider in curriculum management, educational goals, content, methods, and evaluation of lessons aiming at nurturing developing competencies in future science classes in Japan. Our study clarifies that it is necessary to prescribe the Basic Concepts developing competencies and to organize the qualities and abilities related to them. In addition, curriculum management is necessary to effective lesson design, and context-based lessons are desired.

We consider how recent regulatory requirements on units about weight, gravity, and mass, and conventions used since the adoption of the gravitational metric system, affect present meaning and the units of weight in science and mathematics at elementary schools. Measurement units and their symbols are taught using the International System of Units (SI) in the compulsory education curriculum, in accordance with the Measurement Act of Japan. In elementary school, “weight” is used with the unit of mass both for the gravitational force on an object and the mass of an object, where the International Prototype Kilogram defines “weight” with the unit kilogram. The usage of “weight” with gram or kilogram in elementary school seems to be adequate at this stage of the education because the differentiation of concept depends on the students’ developmental stage. This usage is similar to the gravitational metric system, however, which has been replaced by SI. In lower secondary school and afterwards, according to definitions of SI, the meaning of “weight” is changed and used only for the gravitational force, while the term “mass” is introduced. There is scope for improvement regarding the discontinuity from the point of view of the step-by-step learning of knowledge. In this article, we propose two possible solutions. The first solution would be to use the term “weight” only to describe the qualitative feeling, without using units, and to introduce the quantitative academic term “mass” with the unit kilogram, without using physical formulas. Since the term “weight” has two Japanese translations, “omosa” and “jûryô”, the other solution would be to use the term “omosa” with the meaning of “mass” both in elementary school and afterwards, and “jûryô” with the meaning of “size of gravitational force”. With either proposal, coherent terms and units would be used throughout the whole duration of the compulsory education science curriculum.

We developed a teaching material, which consists of a set of glass tubes of varying densities, that can show students the difference between the concepts of density and concentration. The teaching material was used in a science lesson “Substances Around Us” in a lower secondary school in order to facilitate students’ understanding of those concepts. We examined the usefulness of the teaching material from the viewpoints of students’ achievements and their impressions of the material. After the experiment using the new teaching material, most students improved understanding of their concepts of both density and concentration by adding the viewpoint of volume. They also felt that the teaching material was very useful for learning the difference between density and concentration. Therefore, the teaching material developed in this study was confirmed to be useful to enhance students’ concept formation and understanding of the difference between density and concentration.

The aim of this research is to clarify concrete strategies for incorporating the Nature of Science (NOS) into the elementary science curriculum in Japan. First, we define this study’s concept of the NOS based on previous research in the UK, and then analyze how these concepts have been incorporated into the National Curriculum in England. The results revealed the following points: 1. Considering that Japanese science education has a different sociocultural context from the Western one, it is necessary to create country-specific definitions of contents and areas of the NOS. When we develop a science curriculum that adopts the NOS, we also need to create distinct methods to match the country-specific contents and areas of the NOS. 2. By introducing learning based on historical viewpoints using scientific works that Japanese elementary school students can understand, it becomes possible for the students to learn more deeply about science as a social enterprise and to understand how scientific knowledge is developed.

From a standpoint of constructivism, teachers are required to grasp learners’ existing concepts. In the field of physics, as in other fields, various kinds of existing concepts have been investigated. However, there has been no report on existing concepts regarding angle of friction. Under the circumstances, the objective of this study is to investigate what kinds of existing concepts are held by learners who are about to study angle of friction. In order to extract the existing concepts, a concept investigation test was performed in which learners were asked whether angles of friction are equal to or different from each other in two different situations. The results revealed that a majority of them gave incorrect answers. Moreover, it was found that, behind their answers, there were many misunderstandings of what they had previously learned, while naive conceptions based on their daily experiences were much fewer. Furthermore, it was implied that the meta-cognitive supports are effective for these learners to improve upon their conceptions regarding angle of friction toward the correct one.

The purpose of this study is to develop a teaching method to teach children how to write an experiment report for the purposes of fostering scientific expression skills and to test the method’s effectiveness through practicing it in lessons at the elementary school level. We conceptualized the skill of writing an experiment report as meta-cognitive knowledge, developed worksheets by utilizing a scaffolding approach, designed a unit of lessons in which children repeatedly write experiment reports while reducing their reliance on scaffolding supports, and practiced it in the classroom to test the method’s effectiveness. Pre- and post-tests were conducted, and the children’s reports were analyzed. The results of the tests revealed that the experimental group taught via the newly developed method statistically outperformed the control group taught via the standard method. The children’s reports in the experimental group also showed the effectiveness of quality and quantity in written reports. Our teaching method to have children repeatedly write experiment reports by using worksheets that utilized a scaffolding approach was thus confirmed to be effective in fostering children’s understanding of scientific writing and their scientific expression skills.

This study examined the learning processes of low achievers and the effects of the whole-class cooperation method on their performance as compared to the small-group cooperation method. We focused on science experiments in elementary school, in which each student was assigned an individual task that could be accomplished by cooperating with others. Two fourth-grade classes, each including 30 students, participated in this study. The students attended a science lesson taught by the same teacher. In one class, the teacher used the whole-class cooperation method, whereas in the other the teacher adopted the small-group method. We analyzed pre- and post-test performances, the number of standing events in the classroom, and the number of dialogues among students. The results of our analysis showed that the performance of low achievers showed more significant improvement under the whole-class cooperation condition as compared to the small-group method. Additionally, the students walked around more often and had more high-quality discussions in the former condition than in the latter. These results, in addition to qualitative analyses of the contents of the dialogues among students and post-hoc interviews, suggest that the whole-class cooperation method effectively promotes low achievers’ cooperative learning and enhances their performance in elementary school science experiments.

This study examines junior high school students’ abilities to identify and ask investigable questions by comparing their performances to university students’ achievements on paper-and-pencil tests. The participants in this study were 122 ninth-grade students from two junior high schools and 134 students attending a university teacher education course. While the university students were able to identify with almost complete accuracy whether topics on the tests were scientifically investigable, the junior high school students were only able to correctly answer questions involving moral judgement and personal preference. Apart from these two types of questions, they were not able to judge the investigability of natural things and events. It was difficult for both university students and junior high school students to ask investigable questions, even when they found the topics suitable for inquiry. The rate of correct answers to the problem of asking investigable questions was about half of that of the problem of identifying investigable questions for the same items. Regarding types of questions, identifying and asking questions about comparison and classification as relational questions were difficult cognitive tasks for junior high school students compared to the pattern-seeking prediction as descriptive questions. They also faced difficulties in asking investigable questions: the students tended to ask closed questions with binary answers without sufficient awareness of the criteria for comparison and reference. They seldom introduced an operational definition that related measurable quantities (variables) and measuring procedures to the core concepts in explaining the natural things and events under focus. Most of the students asked questions using interrogatives such as ‘why’ that were interpreted as questions about the ontological meanings and backgrounds of natural things and events. On the other hand, few students asked investigable questions that sought descriptions of states of natural phenomena or explanations of their mechanisms.

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the order of thought when transforming interrogative to question during scientific inquiry. For this purpose, we first conducted a survey of university students and graduate students to collect speech protocols when subjects transformed interrogatives into questions. We then analyzed those protocols to reveal the order of thought in the transformation process from interrogative to question. The results of our analysis revealed that “Confirm problem status–Recalling existing knowledge–Factor identification–Formation of hypothesis–Generate question” is, in general, the order of thought when transforming interrogative to question during the scientific inquiry process.

Keio Yochisha elementary school was founded in 1874, and some old teaching materials from the Meiji era remain there. Among them, 102 species of insect specimens from Tokyo Metropolitan Inokashira Park, collected in Showa 6 (1931), were kept. Many of these specimens are designated as extinct or endangered species in the current Tokyo metropolitan area. I conducted a survey to ask the names of 10 insects selected from among them, as well as the reason for their decrease, of 4th to 6th grade elementary school students. The results showed that many children did not know the names of those insects, and revealed that they had various theories on the cause of their decrease in numbers. For the purpose of comparison, we conducted the same survey for 70 college students. Using these specimens, I then implemented lessons for 139 students in the fourth grade of elementary school. Through the students’ investigations into the ecology and characteristics of insects and their repeated discussions, the children were able to construct reasonable concepts and theories about the effects of environmental changes on insects. It was therefore found that prewar insect specimens are useful materials for science teaching. Furthermore, it was suggested that this teaching material can also be used also in the sixth-grade “Human and Environment” science unit which was newly added by the New Course of Study (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2017).