Enhancing Children’s Success in Science Learning: An Experience of Science Teaching in Teacher Primary School Training

Abstract

The Environmental Studies curricular area, taught at primary school level in Portugal, is a challenging context for curricular interdisciplinarity and the achievement of small-scale research and creative and innovative experiences, inside and outside the classroom.  From that assumption, we present, under the master course of primary teacher training, a pedagogical intervention developed with a class of 1st and 3rd year primary school children. Our research focus was to understand to what extent the realization of experimental activities, in a class with children of different school levels, promotes the learning of science and affects other school skills. In this sense, we built and validated teaching resources whose goal is to promote science learning in the classroom, complementing this formal space with another educational context, a laboratory in a higher education institution in the same city. This study has shown that these teaching resources have provided the capacity to building interdisciplinary skills. Considering the attitudes and the affective component, it seems that this was a significant time in the children’s personal and social education process, combined with active learning and socializing. We support the idea that science education in the early years of schooling is promoter of scientific literacy.

Keywords: Science teaching, primary teacher training, experimental activities, air properties