Recent studies have focused on how argumentation, an authentic scientific practice, can be introduced in school science education. In addition, these studies have proposed analytical frameworks for assessing students’ argumentation. Although these frameworks are based on Toulmin’s argument model, there are some differences among them. This study aims to make suggestions for refining the analytical framework by comparing and examining five representative analytical frameworks. We found that the five frameworks focus on claim, data, warrant, and backing. Moreover, the frameworks can be distinguished according to whether or not they involve focus on qualifiers, and the application of rebuttal is classified into two types. By considering these frameworks’ commonalities and differences, we could offer suggestions for a new analytical framework.

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Abstract: What is this thing called ‘gakuryoku’ (academic ability) in ‘Rika’ (School science) education? The aim of the study is to obtain some effective suggestions and points to reconsider and review for the improvement of Rika(School science) education in Japan. In this study, the author at first took a bird’s-eye view of history of the academic controversy with regard to ‘gakuryoku’ by pedagogists and psychologists during the post-war period in Japan, and also analyzed the ways in which competence/competency and scientific/science literacy are defined in other countries.Secondly, the author analyzed EU reports on science education and science curricula in the UK from a perspective of scientific literacy in order to understand how scientific literacy has been reflected on them. As a result, the author found that whereas ‘gakuryoku’ in Japan has been based on the context of school education for long time, scientific competence and scientific literacy in other countries have been intended to position school education within a larger perspective of life-long learning in a knowledge society, so that pupils are enabled to take part in society as active citizens with scientific literacy. It is pointed out that we should reconsider ‘gakuryoku’ in ‘Rika’ through reinterpretation of the Course of Study from the new perspective, reconsidering the Japanese historical context of ‘Rika’ and also referring to case studies of other countries’ science curricula.

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The unit of study of “How to warm up things” is learned in the 4th grade of elementary school. In this unit, learning about conducting heat via metal and forming a scientific concept is easy for children. However, it is difficult for them to form a scientific concept of the conducting of heat in water. Particularly, it is difficult to let them understand the state of movement and the temperature change in water through experimentation. When the students carried out such an experiment, many children acquired the concept of the “rotation model” which pays attention only to movement.Afterward, we let them observe only the change in temperature using a thermometer. As a result, “various concept models” that were going to incorporate an observation phenomenon within existing concepts appeared. But, on the delayed test, these concepts reverted back to the “rotation model”. We regard the “rotation model” as the strong stable model of the impression. On the other hand, we think that “various concept models” are the unstable models that make it more difficult to match an observation phenomenon with an existing concept. Therefore we can suppose that these became extinct with time. With regard to these findings, the need for clarifying existing concepts and the difference with the observation phenomenon is suggested.
We suggest that describing the conduction of heat to water needs to utilize integrated methods that describe the process in chronological order, including an arrow description linking the stages of the process. Moreover, an example in which a different conceptual model is formed from observation using a simplified arrow description is shown.

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This study was intended to examine the effectiveness of applying the learning model of Tsai’s (2000) conflict map in an elementary school science class. We chose to focus on pendulum motion, as it is known that students havestrong preconceptions on the subject. Students were divided into one experimental group and one control group.The teaching strategy utilizing ‘Conflict Maps’ was used only in the experimental group, whereas the control group followed the flow of inquiry learning as shown in the textbook. We performed a concept investigation after the class.The result was that the experimental group was more effective in forming the intended scientific concepts than the control group. Thus, the ‘Conflict Maps’ teaching strategy was effective in bringing about conceptual change in elementary school students.

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The purpose of this research is to find the tendency about what kind of questioning terms are used in which stages of inquiry activities in a Japanese lower secondary school science textbook. This purpose was established in order to learn about the typical kinds of inquiry activities of lower secondary school science in Japan. Therefore, the “questions” written in the lower secondary school science textbook were extracted, a data set was built, cross tabulation of the types and stages of a question was performed, and the results were considered. From the results of the study, the following tendencies were found; (1) similar questions are set in the former and latter parts of inquiry, (2) after observation or experimentation, more concrete questions, which become possible according to the acquired facts and concepts, are set, (3) there are questions for clarifying structures and laws of nature and questions for explaining natural phenomena using the acquired scientific knowledge, and they are properly used by the stages of inquiry, (4) there are different manners for setting questions according to the differences among scientific areas.

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As the results of PISA2006 have been realized, there are concerns in Japan that although students here show an overall high score in scientific literacy, their attitudes toward science were low (NIER, 2007). This study was conducted utilizing the latent structure model that analyzes Japanese students’ attitudes toward science and scientific literacy using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). As the result of this latent structure model estimated by Mplus, information that fit the model’s criteria indicated the existence of two latent classes. The key difference between the two latent classes was the direct effect from F6 (INM) to F7 (SCL) in that class 1 was larger than class 2. The mean values of all constructs (F1-F7) of class 1 were higher than class 2. These results indicated the heterogeneity of Japanese students, so we need to consider this difference when we try to enhance the relationship between students’ attitudes toward science and overall scientific literacy.

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This study aims to figure out the characteristics of the changes in international achievement of Japanese lower secondary school students in biology over time, from the perspective of the revision of the Course of Study, or the Japanese national curriculum. It measured the statistical changes in common items between TIMSS 2007 and TIMSS2011 assessments taken by eighth graders. Specifically, the item parameter drift was analyzed using item response models. During the analysis, this study seriously took the sampling design of TIMSS assessment into account. The common items were classified according to the topic areas and this classification was considered in association with the result of the above statistical analysis.
The results show that the topic area of “Cells and Their Functions” seem to be more favorable for the eighth graders of 2010–2011 school years than for those of the 2006–2007 school years. On the other hand, the topic area of “Ecosystems” seem less favorable for the former than for the latter. These characteristics of the changes in the achievement of the Japanese students over time are discussed in the light of the changes in the curricular emphasis on the relevant subject matter. It is suggested that the favorable result of “Cells and Their Functions” is related to the change in the corresponding science curriculum, whose content was shifted to an earlier grade with the strengthened connection.

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The purpose of this study was to evaluate pragmatically the effectiveness of the Digital Fortune Line system as learning support tool for promoting conceptual change.
In this study, the following two types of evaluations were conducted. First, in order to determine whether the Digital Fortune Line system promotes conceptual change among learners to a greater degree than the paper-and-pencilbased Fortune Line method does, science lessons incorporating the Digital Fortune Line System and other science lessons incorporating the paper-and-pencil based Fortune Line method were implemented to compare the products of conceptual change among the learners in each class. The results showed that the students who participated in the science lessons using the Digital Fortune Line system have changed their naive concepts to scientific concepts more successfully than the children in the science lessons using the paper-and-pencil based Fortune Line method. The results also indicated that the students who participated in the science lessons with the Digital Fortune Line system retain their scientific concepts even three months after the lessons.
Second, in order to investigate how the visualization and sharing of learners’ multiple ideas and their commitments to those ideas—which were made possible by the Digital Fortune Line system—promoted conceptual change,we analyzed the student-student interactions with the layer display function within groups and teacher-students interactions with the counting function within the class as a whole. The results demonstrated that the use of the system functions prompted the children to visualize and share differences in their commitments, and also that the system facilitated students’ interactions to promote the mutual recognition of their metaconceptual awareness.
It can be concluded that the results of this study confirm, within the context of actual science lessons, the effectiveness of the Digital Fortune Line system as a learning support tool, which has also been preliminarily recognized by previous studies.

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This paper examines the effects of social interaction on the metacognitive process that functions within a context of self-regulation. Anastasia, E. (2009) proposed the multifaceted and multilevel model of metacognition, and we interpret this model from the point of view of science learning, and analyze the metacognitive process and representational functions in a social context using this model. Moreover, we have developed instructions to promote social interaction based on the theory of “model co-construction and evolution” advocated by Kahn, S. (2008).
Results indicate that:
(1) Constructing and expressing students’ own models using prior representational network is effective for the promotion of the metacognitive process.
(2) Collaborative learning is effective for the metacognitive monitoring and control of one’s cognition, as well as the other student’s cognition, so that the common goal can be attained.
(3) To promote modeling co-construction, teachers need to support student interaction based on assessment of the students’ expressing models.

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In this study, to foster the ability of students to think, to judge, and to express themselves, we propose some perspectives on the design of learning environments in science teaching. These viewpoints are based on the proposal of Bransford et al., and we designed the science learning environment using these viewpoints. Our results indicate that the children’s abilities in scientific thinking and self-expression (the ability to think, to judge, and to express themselves in science education) improved after implementation of the designed teaching environment.

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Japanese science education has produced well-trained students who exhibit high scores in science achievement tests. However, the perspective of how we should provide educational opportunity for the gifted children has been somewhat neglected. This paper entails a case study of the teacher training program at the Science Learning Centre London (SLCL), aimed to suggest what kind of teaching materials are appropriate to teach gifted children. The authors visited the SLCL in December 2011 to have an oral interview with the person in charge of teacher training. The following three points were found to be characteristic of the SLCL’s program.
a.The definition of ‘gifted children’ and what he/she ‘looks like’ was explained to the teachers; this included classifying and considering aspects of each child’s personality. In this way, the teachers could understand that gifted children are not rare, but actually quite common in the classroom.
b.The teaching materials include practical activities, such as surveys and experiments to produce scientific data, and asking the children to think about whether or not the results were fair. These materials promoted the essential learning skills noted by the National Curriculum such as critical thinking and considering scientific rationales. Furthermore, simple-to-use and easily obtainable equipment is used in the classroom. This means that these activities can be performed by any teacher or at any school.
c.The SLCL has developed scenario-based teaching materials to awaken the intellectual curiosity of gifted children. These scenarios incorporate both static activities, such as listening quietly to a story, and dynamic activities, where students recollect the content and express it in a drawing or verbally with their friends. This methodology encourages children to develop alternative learning attitudes.
These findings suggest to us an effective resource with regard to how to promote initiatives to extend the potential capabilities of all children as well as gifted children.

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The 35 undergraduates of the Department of Education and the Department of Science who wish to earn a lower secondary school science teacher license took a science examination (26 questions), the national school achievement test for lower secondary school executed in 2012, in order to redesign the teacher training program. Their answers were analyzed, and the average number of correct answers was 19.6, or 75.3%. None of the results of the MannWhitney U test showed a significant difference in the mean of correct answers according to college difference, gender, or hometown. The erroneous results were inferred to derive from careless mistakes in some non-answered questions, or from incorrect content. The strong positive correlation found between the undergraduates and lower secondary students in the percentage of correct answers suggests that questions for which the percentage of the students’ correct answers were low showed that the percentage of correct answers of the undergraduates were also low. The result suggests that undergraduates who wish to earn a lower secondary school science teacher license must master the expressions used to describe the contents in line with conditional or logical description.

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