The purpose of this study was to develop teaching materials for a model experiment of the visibility of the moon and Venus in order to improve the understanding and teaching of the visibility of the moon and Venus, as well as to clarify their effectiveness from the viewpoints of both learners and instructors. In developing the teaching material, a 3D printer was used to fabricate gears and a peephole, which are part of the teaching material. This teaching material enables students to become aware of orbits, their directions, and the positions of celestial objects by manipulating the gears, to check the view from the Earth’s perspective through the viewing window while rotating the gears, and to continuously observe changes in the view from the Earth’s perspective.

Based on the positive responses to a questionnaire and the results of the survey questions, the use of this material is expected to have a certain effect in understanding the relationship between the positions of celestial objects and the visibility of the moon and Venus from a space perspective, and the visibility of celestial objects from an Earth perspective.

We developed and implemented an instructional method and teaching materials aimed at sprouting a programming mindset for 4th grade students who have not yet been exposed to programming education. The teaching material developed was a model of an automatic door. One of these models was distributed to each student, and the students were asked to think of a program to operate the automatic door through free trials. In a survey of children’s awareness before and after the educational practice, the mean values of all items tended to be higher in the survey. The effect size of the interest value was small to medium, and the effect size of the use value and thought intention was medium to large. These results indicate that the instructional methods and teaching materials developed in this study are effective for the sprouting of computational thinking.

This study investigated how the ancestors of each group of vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) have been described in the junior high school science textbooks published in the past 17 years. In addition, we surveyed whether differences exist in university students’ understanding of vertebrates’ evolutionary paths according to the learning period. The results revealed that textbooks published before 2011 described reptiles as the ancestors of mammals, but after 2011, amphibians were described as their ancestors. The survey found that, in the groups that did not learn about the evolution of living things at junior high school, the proportion of answers was almost equally divided between amphibians, reptiles, and birds to the question about ancestors of mammals. However, in the groups that learned about the evolution of living things at junior high school, only a few university students considered that the ancestors of mammals were amphibians. In addition, the proportion of students who considered that the ancestors of mammals were reptiles and those who considered that the ancestors of mammals were birds was almost the same. Therefore, it was found that the perception of the evolutionary path of vertebrates differs according to the period of learning.

This study aims to make 4th grade students understand why thermal convection occurs. For this purpose, it is necessary to promote the relationship between the 4th grade units “How things warm up” and “Temperature and volume of things.” We verified the effectiveness of demonstration experiments with water balloons and water cooling, and the introduction of watching videos of solar balloons. Few of the children who received regular classes (control group) answered that water and air became lighter and increase in volume when heated together. On the other hand, many (experimental group) who participated in demonstration experiments with water balloons and water cooling and watched videos of solar balloons responded in such a way. A significant difference was confirmed between the control and experimental groups. The results suggest that it is effective to introduce demonstration experiments of water balloons and water cooling and watching videos of solar balloons to make 4th grade children understand why thermal convection occurs.

Expectation is one of the most important concepts in learning probability. The purpose of this paper is to construct a process of conceptualization of expectation. The theoretical framework is a process of conceptualization based on negation theory. As a result, the process of conceptualization of expectation is developed as follows: [1] to recognize that the simple average may produce an average that is insufficient to be considered balanced; [2] to reconsider as expectation a model that does not assume that the certainty of each value is equal; [3] the simple average is, for example, “a model that does not consider the difference in certainty of each value” and “cannot be applied to situations where the certainty of each value is different”; [4] to recognize that the expectation may not allow selection taking into account variables (e.g., the amount of money won). In addition, we analyzed five Japanese high school mathematics A textbooks from the viewpoint of the process of forming the process of conceptualization of expectation that we constructed. We derived four issues in teaching expectation and proposed problems and activities to overcome them.

Indigenous knowledge (hereafter referred to as IK) has been publicly incorporated into the science curriculum of countries that have a large population of Indigenous People, such as the United States of America, Canada, and Australia. Despite this, Japanese awareness of the Ainu people as an Indigenous People of Japan has not been sufficiently deepened, and IK has rarely been discussed in the JSSE. Although the revised curriculum for fiscal 2020 provides more opportunities to learn about the history and culture of the Ainu people in social studies and other subjects, there is no mention of any IK of the Ainu people in science textbooks. The IK of the Ainu people is only touched upon by some schools in Hokkaido that are enthusiastic about Ainu culture learning, but there are some issues such as teachers’ anxiety about teaching the subject, and a lack of teaching materials. ‘Knowledge native to Japan’ is considered to be different from both Western science and IK. Primary and secondary science (RIKA in Japanese) education in Japan, which has been developed with this knowledge system, is said to include not only Western scientific objectives such as the acquisition of ‘observational and experimentation skills,’ and ‘problem-solving skills’ but also the emotional objective of ‘loving nature and living things.’ Thus, Japanese science education is said to be unique in that students learn both Western science and ‘knowledge native to Japan.’ Despite the issues mentioned here, it is suggested that by adding more IK from Ainu culture to this unique Japanese science education, an even more diverse and comprehensive science education can be developed.

We make decisions based on numerical values (quantitative data) in many aspects of our daily lives. Qualitative data can also be transformed into numerical values to do mathematical scientific decision making. This paper has two purposes. First, we will develop teaching materials for mathematical scientific decision making based on multiple data using data transformation. Secondly, we will evaluate learners regarding changes in their attitudes toward using mathematics in their daily lives and society, and how they effect transfer to other situations. First, we extracted elements of mathematical scientific decision making that require data transformation, and developed teaching materials for “Deciding the destination of a school trip to Nikko” for sixth grade elementary school students. In the practice, mathematical scientific decision making was conducted through indexing, weighting, and quantification of values. Next, we evaluated the change in attitudes toward applying mathematics to daily life and society, and the use of the learning. The students’ attitudes improved as they engaged in the study. In the transfer study, most of the children used the externalization and indexing of values. On the other hand, less than half of the children in the transfer study did mathematical scientific decision making. It can be considered that the complexity of mathematical operations is a factor for the target children. It is suggested that systematic learning by dividing activities may be necessary in the future.