Although many previous studies have emphasized problem-solving in elementary school science instruction, the 2018 and 2022 “National Assessment of Academic Ability” highlighted the problems with successful cultivation of problem-solving skills. We believe that even though learners have acquired the methods necessary for problem-solving, they have not been able to transfer these methods to other situations as learning strategies. In this study, with the aim of helping solve this problem, we developed a “step-by-step science teaching method for acquiring learning strategies” to enhance “problem-solving skills in a situation” and evaluated its effectiveness. This method is an instructional method that not only aims at the goals of the unit being taught, but also aims at simultaneously acquiring a learning strategy to enable learners to solve problems in situations autonomously. In science instruction, two types of problem-solving exist: the first type follows the problem-solving process indicated in the Courses of Study, and the second type solves the problems corresponding to each scene of the problem-solving process (e.g., making a prediction in a prediction or hypothesis setting scene, thinking of an experimental method in a verification plan making a scene, et cetera.). “Problem-solving in a situation” is the latter. “Problem-solving skills in a situation” encompasses three elements: the ability to solve problems in the scenario autonomously, the ability to categorize the problem situations and appropriately select and utilize learning strategies corresponding to each situation, and the ability to transfer the learning strategies acquired to other units of study. As a result of this teaching method, the percentage of children who were able to use strategies to appropriately categorize situations and use the appropriate problem-solving strategies for each situation increased. This was true not only for previously studied content but also for new content that had not yet been studied.

This study aims to promote understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) throughout the year in Science classes in Japanese Lower Secondary School, and to verify whether deepening students’ understanding of NOS and applying that understanding to scientific inquiry can promote autonomous learning in Science. In the practical activities, more than 80% of the students deepened their understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) and discovered their own perspectives on “the significance of learning Science” and “how Science should be learned”. Based on these ideas, we were able to confirm that the students developed self-regulated learning, and were also able to clarify that NOS understanding promotes autonomous learning in Science. The students not only applied the ideas they had discovered about the “the significance of learning Science” and “how Science should be learned” to their studies, but also reflected on the process of applying them, gradually refining the ideas they had discovered. From these positive results, we were able to confirm that the students had deepened their understanding of NOS and were trying to develop self-regulated learning beyond the learning they were currently working on.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the effect of the formulation framework on the development of learners’ scientific expression by conducting junior high school science classes with and without the formulation framework of learning activities that incorporate instruction on the formulation of consideration descriptions, using a peer evaluation activity. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the learners’ investigation questions, their impressions of the class, and their responses to the questionnaire. From our analysis, the following three points became clear. (1) In learning activities that incorporate instruction on the formulation of consideration descriptions via peer evaluation activity, the use of a formulation framework encouraged students to rewrite their reports and, in doing so, improve upon their scientific expression. The group that incorporated the formulation of consideration descriptions framework produced reports including elements of results (data), claims (conclusions), and evidence (reasons) for the experiment in reductions; further, these learners were able to connect the results (data), claims (conclusions), and evidence (reasons) in this order. (2) The students’ understanding of how to write and order their consideration descriptions and their awareness of the ease of writing consideration descriptions through learning activities that incorporate instruction on their formulation was improved under the peer evaluation activity using the formulation framework. (3) One of the reasons for this improvement was that the students became aware of the ease of communicating their consideration descriptions to others as well as to themselves; in doing so, they increased their sense of competency of the content, writing style, and order of their consideration descriptions, as well as their efficacy expectations. Furthermore, the learners increased their outcome expectations that they could write consideration descriptions that were easy to communicate to others and appropriately expressed which may have increased their motivation. In contrast, no such improvements in scientific expression, sense of competency, or motivation was seen in the control group that did not use the formulation framework.

This study presents a practical example of educational assessment using generative AI. Specifically, we developed an application using GPTs, which is a function of ChatGPT-4, to provide immediate feedback to pupil’s expressions during the unit on “Use of Electricity” in a 6th grade science class. The actual contents of the feedback to the pupil by the application and the changes in the pupils’ expressions after receiving the feedback were analyzed. As a result of the analysis, we found that the pupils corrected their expressions appropriately, that they recognized their own mistakes and corrected them, that they were satisfied with the feedback, that they made further corrections even after receiving good evaluations, and that the feedback was appropriate. With this case study, we were thus able to demonstrate the possibility of utilizing a generative AI for educational assessment and timely feedback.

The purpose of this study was to investigate what upper secondary school students questioned and what they wanted to clarify from the results of experiments in basic chemistry. Therefore, 111 students in the first year of upper secondary school were shown the results of an experiment with the content of “Quantitative relationships in chemical reactions.” The students were then were asked to answer freely regarding what they questioned, “what they wanted to clarify from the question” and “what caused the phenomenon they questioned.” Their statements were then analyzed. When the experimental results with discrepancies between calculated and measured values, were presented to the students, many wondered why such discrepancies existed. Other students were not interested in clarifying the possible causes of the discrepancy, but rather wanted to investigate something else of personal interest that the teacher did not intend as part of the lesson. Additionally, some students did not attempt to resolve the factors they questioned at all.

In this study, we developed and put into practice a lower secondary school science lesson that utilizes electric circuits (including short circuits) as teaching materials to help students build the concept of electric potentials and further solidify their understanding of voltage. Before the lesson, most students had not acquired the scientific knowledge that there is no difference in potential (voltage) between conductive wires that do not have a resistor in between them. However, after the lesson, the results demonstrated that their understanding of this concept had improved significantly. The results also confirmed that a certain number of students were able to further use this knowledge as a means to consider the potential of the entire circuit and consider unknown potential differences.

This study, using toy blocks as models of atoms, was conducted with the aim of improving students’ understanding of chemical changes and chemical reaction formulae studied in atoms and molecules in Lower Secondary School. The results of the study demonstrated that the student’ understanding of chemical reaction equations was deepened when they learned by manipulating toy blocks as a model of atoms. In addition, it is thought that, by representing valence in terms of the size of the blocks, the students will be able to consider chemical changes by taking into account the number of arms of the atom. This indicates that modeling atoms using toy blocks is also useful in predicting what kind of substances will be formed by chemical reactions. The results of the questionnaire survey further revealed that the use of toy blocks as atoms models increased students’ liking for learning chemical reaction formulae, ease of understanding, and willingness to continue learning more positively as compared to the conventional teaching materials that use card models of atoms.

The purpose of this study was to develop a psychological safety scale for science observation and experiment groups. Validity was examined by adding novel items to the four that have been ordinarily used up to now. From the results, certain validity could be confirmed from the evidence of structural and external aspects. The analysis also showed that most of the variance in psychological safety came from within-level, since the ICC₁ values for each item were not very large. Since the value of the ω coefficient was sufficient, it can be confirmed that this scale is indeed capable of accurately assessing the psychological safety status of individual students. When dealing with psychological safety in basic research, it is desirable to conduct the analysis after decomposing the between- and within- variance components via methods such as hierarchical linear models and MCFA, while considering the possibility of increasing the probability of Type I error.

In this study, a particle model was constructed using solute and solvent particles with the aim of enhancing lower secondary school students’ understanding of homogeneity in the dissolution of substances. Other teaching materials were also developed to confirm the process of uniformity in the concentration of aqueous solutions using a copper concentration cell, and the effectiveness of the new materials were examined through verification classes. From the results, the following three points became clear: 1) The bias of concentration in the aqueous solution and the process toward a homogeneous state could be quantified using the copper concentration cell. 2) By representing not only the solute but also the solvent as a particle model, we were able to change the students’ erroneous understanding that the solute particles are biased toward the bottom of the solution during dissolution into the correct understanding. 3) The students found the material useful because they were able to quantify the process toward a homogeneous state. These results suggested that the particle models using solute and solvent particles and the copper concentration cell are effective teaching materials to help students understand the homogeneity of aqueous solutions and the process of dissolving substances into a homogeneous state.

STEM/STEAM education is spreading worldwide, and the introduction of engineering into science is being promoted. Therefore, we implemented a class on electrical resistance that introduced the engineering design process in the lower secondary school science unit “Current and its applications” and analyzed the effects of the lesson on the students’ learning. By incorporating the engineering design process into science class, it is possible to experience trial and error and optimization in manufacturing. In this study, after learning the relationship between current and voltage (Ohm’s law) following the sequence of the textbook (Arima et al., 2018), we included an activity to design a resistor using scientific concepts. We also held a class in which students learned about combined resistance and resistance dependence on materials by drawing on what they had learned in resistor design. To enable the students’ successful design of resistors, we developed a teaching material that uses a conductive sheet (Okubo et al., 2023) to adjust the brightness of LEDs through engineering design. We planned a class that corresponds to the engineering design process based on the analysis of the NGSS-compliant science textbook “Elevate Science” (Ohta and Uchinokura, 2019). As a result of the practical implementation of the lesson at a public lower secondary school, students could use the knowledge they had learned about resistance to conduct creative activities and design a variety of resistors. The results of questionnaire surveys confirmed that understanding of what had already been learned about electrical circuits was reinforced, and that awareness of the importance and usefulness of the learning content had also increased.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the teaching practice journals on science teaching created by pre-service teachers and to identify the explicit knowledge created through the teaching practice as a case study. To achieve this goal, the journals created by three education students were analyzed in terms of propositions and modalities. The results of the analysis revealed that three types of explicit knowledge were created through the teaching practice: explicit knowledge about teaching strategies, explicit knowledge about students’ learning, and explicit knowledge about classroom attitudes. Among them, there was a bias toward explicit knowledge related to individual teaching activities. The results also suggested that most of the explicit knowledge created was knowledge that the three aspiring teachers rated as necessary or appropriate, or knowledge that they perceived as established as fact. Furthermore, the explicit knowledge about students’ learning did not include the evaluative perceptions of the trainee educators. Based on the above results, we have made three recommendations that can be used by instructors at the teacher training school and in other teacher training departments.

In this study, we developed an experimental method to visualize the process by which a planet reaches its equilibrium temperature for use in Earth Science-related subjects within teacher training courses at upper secondary schools and universities. Using an infrared heater and a glass bottle to model the central star and the planet, respectively, we demonstrated that the rate of temperature change decreases over time, with the bottle, or planet, eventually stabilizing at the equilibrium temperature. By visualizing and recording real-time temperature changes with a digital temperature logger, students can directly observe the process of reaching equilibrium temperature in the classroom and quantitatively analyze the energy balance at equilibrium. The estimated energy balance was generally consistent with theoretical predictions, demonstrating that students can explore the equilibrium state from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives in classroom settings.

According to the Central Council for Education, a shift in teachers’ views of training is required (Central Council for Education, 2022). The purpose of this study is to verify how science teachers’ competencies are demonstrated in lesson studies by utilizing a German lesson planning map based on Kiper & Mischke (2004, 2006, 2009). From the results of the study, the following points were revealed: 1) By relating the lesson planning map to the science teacher’s competencies, we were able to discern how the competencies are demonstrated. It can be said that a lesson planning map based on German lesson theory can clearly indicate the status of science teachers’ competencies. 2) In order for teachers to design their own learning, it was suggested that this would be possible not only through self-evaluation utilizing questionnaires, but also by using teacher educators’ (researchers’) evaluations using lesson planning maps and disclosing the differences to the teachers. 3) In situations in which teachers practiced collaborative lesson study, or in situations in which “normative concepts” influenced their lesson studies, we observed incidents in which the competencies could not be discerned from the lesson studies. This suggests that the competencies need to be viewed in an integrated and interlocking approach, with consideration of factors other than lesson studies.

This study aimed to clarify the concepts on which university students who aspire to become science teachers base their evaluations of the appropriateness of measurement results. While the two fundamental concepts of “accuracy” and “precision” are crucial in scientific measurements, it has been pointed out that learners often do not sufficiently acquire these concepts. In this study, 23 university students were asked to conduct measurements and evaluate the appropriateness of the results. Initially, 95.7% of the students judged the measurements as a “failure” because the measured values differed from the true values. However, after the instructor raised issues related to “precision”, 91.3% of the students re-evaluated the measurements as a “success”, with 81.0% of them focusing on the distribution of the measured values. Moreover, even in a follow-up survey conducted two months later, around 70% of the students had successfully retained the concept of “precision”. Evaluating the appropriateness of scientific measurements requires a multifaceted approach, not only focusing on “accuracy”, but also “precision”. These findings provide foundational information on how to effectively manage and teach the basic concepts of scientific measurement in future science education.

In this study, naive concepts regarding the power consumption of electrical resistance in the ‘Electricity and Magnetism’ unit of upper secondary school physics were elicited, and teaching materials and an instructional program were developed and implemented to clarify and correct these concepts. First, a pre-learning concept survey on the power consumption of electrical resistance revealed that many students have naive concepts such as ‘the higher the resistance value, the higher the power consumption’. To help students modify these naive concepts and form scientific concepts, conductive thermo agar, which can visualize the generation of Joule heat due to electrical resistance in the form of color changes, was developed and used in the experiment in this study. The results of pre-, post-, and delayed surveys of the experimental and control groups showed that the educational program using conductive thermo agar was effective in modifying the students’ naive concept and in successfully acquiring and maintaining scientific concepts.

In 2002, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) launched the Super Science High School (SSH) program, and in 2024 it expanded on this by introducing the “Basic Framework for Interdisciplinary Education.” These have stimulated an increased interest in interdisciplinary education in upper secondary schools. We expect the effects of such education to be seen in the future. The school where I work is a designated SSH school. It has established courses in which students can conduct research activities without being constrained by the traditional “humanities” or “hard science” frameworks. In this study, we conducted a mutual presentation and peer evaluation of the results of the students’ research activities at a presentation meeting and examined how students show interest and evaluation in interdisciplinary problem research. The results clarified that many science students highly evaluated research activities in the field of “Japanese language and social studies” in terms of “expressiveness” and “understandability”. The research that received particularly high evaluations had an interdisciplinary aspect that combined the field of “Japanese language and social studies” with science elements.