Primary Connections : reforming science teaching in Australian primary schools.

Concerns about the status and quality of science teaching in Australian primary schools led the Australian Academy of Science to develop Primary Connections over 2004–8 with funding from DEST and the support of states and territories. Primary Connections is a teacher professional learning program supported with curriculum resources that aims to enhance learning outcomes in science and the literacies of science by supporting both inservice and preservice primary teachers to teach science effectively. Primary Connections is a systematic, widespread and innovative reform that complements programs within states and territories. The program is based on an innovative teaching and learning approach that links science with literacy, uses cooperative learning, embeds assessment with teaching and learning, and follows an inquiry process including student-planned investigations. Research has demonstrated that the program improves teachers’ confi dence, self-effi cacy and practice, students’ learning, and the status of science within schools. features

[1]  R. Sheffield.  Facilitating teacher professional learning : analysing the impact of an Australian professional learning model in secondary science , 2004 .

[2]  G. Lawrance.  Clever teachers, clever sciences: preparing teachers for the challenge of teaching science, mathematics and technology in 21st century Australia , 2003 .

[3]  Paul Warwick,et al.  IT in primary investigations , 1994 .

[4]  David W. Johnson,et al.  AN OVERVIEW OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING , 2002 .

[5]  John Hattie,et al.  Teachers Make a Difference, What is the research evidence? , 2003 .

[6]  Richard Gott,et al.  Practical work: its role in the understanding of evidence in science , 1996 .

[7]  Denis Goodrum,et al.  How confident are primary school teachers in teaching science? , 1990 .

[8]  Stephen P. Norris,et al.  How literacy in its fundamental sense is central to scientific literacy , 2003 .

[9]  Rodger W. Bybee,et al.  Achieving Scientific Literacy: From Purposes to Practices , 1997 .

[10]  W. O'Neil,et al.  THE NATURE OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY , 2007 .

[11]  Julie Gess-Newsome.  Pedagogical Content Knowledge: An Introduction and Orientation , 1999 .

[12]  Examining the evidence: Science achievement in Australian schools in TIMSS 2002 , 2004 .

[13]  Vaughan Prain,et al.  Primary connections: Stage 2 trial: Research report , 2005 .

[14]  James Paul Gee,et al.  Language in the Science Classroom: Academic Social Languages as the Heart of School-Based Literacy , 2004 .

[15]  L. Enochs,et al.  Toward the development of an elementary teacher's science teaching efficacy belief instrument , 1990 .

[16]  Jeannett Martin,et al.  Reading Science: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Discourses of Science , 1998 .

[17]  David Palmer,et al.  Factors contributing to attitude exchange amongst preservice elementary teachers , 2002 .

[18]  Len Unsworth,et al.  Teaching Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum: Changing Contexts of Text and Image in Classroom Practice , 2001 .

[19]  Student teachers’ confidence to teach science: is more science knowledge necessary to improve self‐confidence? , 1995 .

[20]  Regina Dunlea,et al.  Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). , 2005 .