It is necessary to emphasize transdisciplinary education for co-creation to achieve the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). However, transdisciplinary education has not been integrated in science education. This study clarifies the positioning of transdisciplinary education for co-creation to achieve the SDGs, with the further aim to clarify the learning content for fostering a transdisciplinary perspective in science education. The practice of STS (Science, Technology, Society) and ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) helps students recognize the issues that impede the achievement of SDGs through understanding scientific phenomena. However, scientific research related to social issues is indispensable for achieving SDGs. Moreover, transdisciplinary education emphasizes giving students a perspective that links social and scientific progress. Therefore, it is necessary to link the progress of social problems with scientific research, and students should be encouraged to become more interested in considering social issues from the perspective of scientific research.

In this paper, we investigate the historical development of project-based learning in science education in Germany. We identify and examine five key points: First, the integration of opposing pedagogies—subject-based teaching and project-based learning—took place against a backdrop of criticisms directed toward project-based learning that were prompted by the rise of the project week. Second, the emphasis on project-based learning in science education was triggered by the resistance against “scientism” and “blind faith in progress.” Third, toward the end of the 1980s, the application of project-based learning expanded beyond comprehensive and cross-curricular contents, focusing on social issues and environmental problems. Fourth, in the 1990s, “project-oriented learning,” a classroom learning style that incorporated only the primary features of a project, drew attention, leading to the development of this type of classroom practice in science education. Fifth, project-based learning is acknowledged again as an effective form of classroom learning to develop students’ skills in recent focus areas such as “evaluation” competence and “communication” competence.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the formation of the scientific concept of mass in high school physics education. Based on Okino and Matsumoto’s (2011) metacognitive support strategies (Strategy 1: Clarification of naive concepts, Strategy 2: Clarification of the acquisition process of naive concepts, Strategy 3: Connection and matching of naive concepts and scientific concepts). The practice classes were divided into two groups: one using all three strategies of metacognitive support (experimental group: two classes, N = 52) and one using only strategy 1 (control group: two classes, N = 43). The implemented practice lessons were examined to see how strategies 2 and 3 affected students’ understanding. The results showed that the experimental group showed some effectiveness in constructing the scientific concept of mass. Analysis further revealed that strategies 2 and 3 are effective in resolving the conflict between the naive and scientific concepts that arose in strategy 1, and in enabling students to correctly consider the effects of force and mass on motion.

In this study, the authors developed an educational program with an environmental perspective for an upper secondary school Basic Biology class that included an activated sludge experiment, focusing on the decomposers, and attempted to clarify the lesson’s positive educational impact in a practical manner. It became clear that students’ knowledge and understanding of bacteria, activated sludge, protists, and ecology of rivers were all improved. They were able to learn effectively about decomposition and water purification via the activated sludge and, further, were able to successfully acquire knowledge about the existence and role of decomposers. Moreover, the activity was found to have boosted the students’ motivation with regard to environmental conservation and their awareness of the importance of bacteria.

This study examined junior high school, high school, and university students’ understanding of uncertainty in scientific measurement, by administering a paper-pencil or online test. The participants were 285 students from junior high schools, 137 students from high schools, and 250 students from universities. The results were as follows: overall, statistically significant differences between test scores by students from different school types were found. High school and university students had higher scores than junior high school students. The high school students studying physics, which was used as the context of the test, had higher scores than other high school students. The university students’ test scores were not affected by their fields of specialization. Students from all types of schools did not realize that uncertainty will inevitably occur in scientific measurement. Compared to the older students, junior high school students had less knowledge of the uncertainty caused by human and instrumental factors. Regarding instrumental factors, the students were asked for their preference between analog and digital measuring tools. Some students selected an analog thermometer because of its readability, operationality, and continuous measurement, while others naively selected a digital one because they considered it to be more accurate due to its technological aspect. At least about 60% of the students selected the mean value as the representative value for a set of data and could calculate a reference value in other measurements. The students from all school types had difficulties in evaluating scientific measurement by considering accuracy and precision together. They considered a set of data in which the values were near each other as consistently acceptable data. This indicated that it is easier for them to understand the idea of precision in scientific measurement compared to the idea of accuracy. The findings of the study suggested a need for further research on the relationship between students’ understanding of the uncertainty in scientific measurement with related knowledge, such as science content knowledge, as well as a need for the development of topics in the science curriculum to enhance students’ understanding of it.

In current science education, one of the issues that has come to the forefront is to aim for the development of children’s abilities of critical thinking and expression. In science learning, children learn by thinking and expressing while associating various modes of representation (words, symbols, tables, graphs, and figures) with each other. In this study, we tried to clarify the actual conditions of the process of connection and transformation among these modes of representation. Specifically, we based research on that of Airey & Linder (2009), who proposed a model for the fluency of connections and transformations between modes of representations. We analyzed primary school science classes to identify qualitative changes in the process of connection and transformation among modes of representation. The results of our study and analysis reveal that the connections among the modes of representation could be classified into five patterns. In addition, several factors involved in the connection and transformation among the modes of representation in the science learning process could be identified.

The purpose of this study was to compare the reflections of children who shared commented-upon photographs with those who did not, and to verify the effects. Two classes in the 2nd grade, comprised of 58 students in total, participated in this study. Through field observations, the children created commented-upon photographs to reflect on and describe what they noticed in them. As a result of comparing the students’ annotations and reflections, it was found that the children who shared the commented-on photo did not change the details of what they noticed in the annotation as much in comparison to the children who did not share it. In retrospect, it became clear that there is much awareness of “visual”, “tactile”, “smell”, “smell”, “purpose/question”, “past experience”, and “emotion” aspects, and that the photos are evaluated by indicators that form the bases of scientific processes. We investigated shared recognition and the increase and decrease in the amount of awareness, as evaluated by indicators that form scientific processes. These results suggest that sharing commented-upon photographs promotes increased awareness in reflection and leads students to develop a smoother and deeper connection with science.

This study is about the conservation of matter in aqueous solutions for 5th grade elementary school children. The children’s views of matter were clarified. Among the children, there are two ideas that salt is gone because it is no longer visible and the idea that salt is there even though it is not visible, in salt water. In the idea that there is no salt in salt water, the child believes that taste and weight are not attributes of salt, but are independent of it. The idea that salt does not disappear in salt water includes two theories: the particle theory and the melting theory. The two theories, “salt exists” and “salt does not exist” in the salt water can both explain following observed facts: salt dissolves and becomes invisible; salt water has a taste and preserves the weight of salt; and salt appears when salt water evaporates. In the end, the observed facts cannot determine either of these two theories. Therefore, instead of demonstrating each observation and experiment independently, we treated them as a whole and used simplicity and consistency as criteria for judging theories. Through this method, the children were able to understand the scientific theory that there is salt in salt water even though they cannot see it.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the actual state of elementary school students’ consensus building abilities in ordinary science classes, and to derive suggestions for devising teaching methods based on the survey results. In order to achieve these goals, we created evaluation questions to measure consensus building ability and conducted a fact-finding survey of fifty-eight students in the sixth grade of elementary school. The results of the survey revealed that problems exist regarding “the ability to examine the validity of mutual ideas based on scientific grounds” and “the ability to find consensus points that everyone can be convinced of” compared to “the ability to compare and classify”. Based on these results, it is suggested that utilizing consensus building in the classroom may be an effective way to make students and teachers aware of the judgment criteria when judging the importance of cultivating “the ability to examine the validity of mutual ideas based on scientific grounds”. Regarding “the ability to find a consensus that everyone can agree on,” it was suggested that not only “metacognition of oneself” but also “metacognition as a group” could be utilized as an effective tool.

In recent years, floods due to the overflow of rivers have occurred with more frequency. It is thus meaningful and timely to consider how to teach disaster prevention education with regard to river floods, from the perspective of building a sustainable society. Rivers not only carry the risk of disaster, but also bring the blessings of water supply and the formation of alluvial plains inhabited by humans from past civilizations to present day. Such is the duality of nature. Therefore, in this research, we developed a learning program for the fifth grade of elementary school that allows the students to grasp the duality of nature from the transition of the river environment and the history of human activities, using the Yasu River in Shiga Prefecture, which is a familiar area, as a theme. The learning program included various topics, such as capturing natural disasters in the Yasu River basin through model experiments and understanding people’s lives through water utilization and hydraulic control from the remnants of the Yayoi period. For the children who received this learning program, we asked them to write an image map drawn before and after the lesson, and we compared the contents to assess the lesson’s effectiveness. The results revealed that the children were indeed able to recognize the blessings and dangers of the river after the lesson. From this research, we were thus able to show this learning program, which is composed from the viewpoint of curriculum management centered on science, embodies “Education on safety including disaster prevention (cross-curricular on contemporary educational issues)”. At the same time, we were able to show that the learning program was in line with the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).

In the study of radiation in junior high school science, although the number of classes conducting cloud chamber experiments is increasing, it has not been investigated whether the students fully understand the meaning of the cloud chamber experiment or its various operations. In this study, we conducted a cloud chamber experiment in a class learning about radiation and investigated the actual state of the students’ understanding of various aspects of the experiment from a number of perspectives via the administration of a questionnaire survey and interview survey. The results of our analysis clearly show the following four points: 1. About 80% of the students who participated in the experiment answered that the “radiation trail” was “radiation”. 2. About 60% of the students who participated in the experiment did not understand the meaning of important experimental operations such as why ethanol is added, the purpose of cooling with dry ice, and why the cloud chamber is sealed. 3. Even students who have a correct prior understanding the invisibility of radiation and its penetrating power will overturn it and misunderstand after conducting the cloud chamber experiment. 4. Even when the cloud chamber experiment is carried out successfully, the students misunderstand the nature of radiation by misapplying the phenomenon that occurred in the cloud chamber experiment to their experience of daily life.

In this study, we categorized observations and experiments published in the lower secondary school science textbooks of “Company Y”, certified by the Ministry of Education in 2020, from the perspective of “inquiry skills” developed by Hasegawa and others (2013), with an aim to clarify the inquiry characteristics of each cluster. From the obtained results and our analysis, the following findings were revealed: (1) Observations and experiments published in the lower secondary school science textbooks of “Company Y” certified by the Ministry of Education in 2020 are categorized into six types according to their tendency toward fostering “inquiry skills”. (2) For observations and experiments in the first grade of lower secondary school, students describe the appearance, properties, structure, and characteristics of changes both qualitatively and quantitatively. However, there is a tendency for them to be recorded or qualitatively identified based on the viewpoint / criteria of classification. (3) For observations and experiments in the second and third grades, students make hypotheses and experimental plans, and make changes in the nature of the events. They qualitatively and quantitatively grasp the aforementioned aspects and characteristics, control the independent variable, and change the dependent variable. There is a tendency to capture the qualitatively and quantitatively, and to use a model for qualitative results. They furthermore have a tendency to consider quantitative results by organizing them in a table and graphing them. (4) From the perspective of “inquiry skills”, there are some differences in the contents between observations and experiments in elementary and lower secondary schools. However, the corresponding exploratory features are indeed recognized.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the research misconduct of children in elementary school science experiments and its causes. We observed and recorded a lesson on “pendulum movement” and created a speech protocol. We classified the research misconduct that occurred in four situations: deriving results, recording results, processing results, and reporting results, and analyzed the causes of the research misconduct. Our results revealed many cases of unrecorded results in “recording results”, as well as many cases of inappropriate processing of data in “processing results”. These findings indicate that there is indeed research misconduct in elementary school science experiments that is likely to occur in each situation. The results further showed that the research misconducts were caused by two factors: the characteristics of the experiment, such as the difficulty of the measurements, and the thoughts and feelings of the group members, such as their discomfort with the results and their regard and consideration for the teacher.

The food chain game is a teaching material that was practiced by Imura (2002). In this game, students are divided into three groups of producers, prey, and predators to foster the students’ understanding of population change over time. The food chain game and my study thereof was introduced into my lower secondary school science class on an experimental basis. This study aims to discern what kind of change happens in students’ views and in their method of scientific thinking, and to assess the pedagogical effectiveness of the game from the changes in their views and thinking. The results of this study revealed that the food chain game was effective to enhance students’ motivation and to foster active learning. They could acquire the perspective that predator and prey co-vibration, but could not acquire the temporal perspective that population fluctuations on the part of predators are necessarily delayed. It was further suggested that students who played the food chain game could make more detailed description than students who attended the regular lesson on that topic.

This study investigates the effects of the whole-class cooperation method on the performance of low achievers in elementary school science classes. For this purpose, the study considered two fourth-grade classes with 30 learners in each class; one class experienced the whole-class cooperation method, whereas the other did not. One month later, the same teacher taught both classes a lesson that did not follow the whole-class cooperation method. Subsequently, the pre-test and post-test scores of students, the number of times the students stood and walked during the lesson, and the content and frequency of student conversations were analyzed. The test scores of the low achievers who had experienced the whole-class cooperation method proved to be higher than the scores of those who had not experienced the method. Many conversations that were effective in improving performance resulted from increasing the number of times that students walked around and mingled in class. Furthermore, the post-class interview revealed that students acquired learning strategies from the whole-class cooperation method, recognized the advantages of those strategies, and utilized them in later learning. These findings clearly demonstrate that the whole-class cooperation method enabled active engagement of students and markedly improved the low achievers’ performance.

Many schools implemented online lessons in 2020 owing to the impact of COVID-19. It is expected that students and teachers will continue to switch irregularly between face-to-face and online lessons during the academic year for the foreseeable future. Therefore, there is great need to develop teaching material that can be easily adapted so that students can perform experiments at home. Recrystallization is one of the most important techniques used for purifying a mixture. Of the crystallization experiments that can be conducted using only commercially available materials, precipitation of urea crystals was chosen. We subsequently devised a crystallization methodology involving the application of an aqueous solution of urea onto an overhead projector (OHP) film, air-drying the film, and sandwiching it in a self-sealing laminating pouch to make decorations of the acicular crystals that were precipitated in a plane. This experiment can be performed in both face-to-face and online classes and is also effective for developing students’ abilities to express their ideas because it provides an opportunity for students to explain what they see using scientific concepts. We found that this experiment was well-received by lower secondary school students and there were no differences in self-assessment regarding the beauty of the crystals between the online and face-to-face lesson students. As this experiment allows students to observe the results in a short period of time and is visually beautiful, it proved to be an effective teaching material for arousing the curiosity and interest of students. We therefore hosted an experimental classroom designed for elementary school students at a local science festival. This “Urea-Crystal Wall Decorations” experiment activity is expected to increase students’ positive attitudes toward science at a time when society is dealing with COVID-19, which has made it difficult to carry out scientific experiments in the classroom.

The first purpose of this study was to examine the effects of teaching methods in which the science teacher introduced the teaching points for functions in a class on density in lower secondary school science, had the students focus on the relationship between two quantities, and encouraged them to consider the relationship among tables, graphs, and equations. The second aim was to conduct a mathematics class on proportion after the science class on density, and to examine the effects of repeating the teaching points on functions by teachers of both subjects. In order to achieve these purposes, we conducted a science class on density and the mathematics class on proportionality in first-grade lower secondary school classes. In addition, we administered follow-up questionnaires to the students. From the results of the quantitative analysis, it was clear that the teaching methods of this study were effective in helping students understand the relationship between two quantities in the science class of density. Additionally, the results of the qualitative analysis, it was suggested that it was important to repeat the teaching points for functions common to both subjects through science and mathematics classes. The findings of this study provided the bases and suggestions which support the possibility of teaching methods to promote the acquisition of intensive quantity concepts that many students find difficult to understand. Furthermore, it is expected that this method can contribute to designing classes that improve cross-curriculum learning in science and mathematics.