Science Education in the Primary Years

This essay centers around a primary school setting, where a science week has taken place and how Mary, a primary school educator, has helped in the development of inquisitiveness in the minds of young people. It discusses the impact of hands-on activities and the role of teachers in creating engaging learning experiences. The essay also explores the benefits of STEM learning and the constructivist approach in science education.

Running head: SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE PRIMARY YEARS
SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE PRIMARY YEARS
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE PRIMARY YEARS
Reporting
This essay centers round a primary school setting, where a science week has taken place
and how Mary, a primary school educator has helped in the development of inquisitiveness in the
minds of young people. Mary is in charge of a primary class and had been handed over with
silkworm eggs to conduct a classroom activity. Initially we could find in the extract that the
educator was not very excited with the activity, with the thought of the some wriggling creatures
moving around the entire classroom and she was also in doubt as how she will be managing such
an already chaotic class, if such distractions are brought to the class. To our surprise, we could
see that such creatures spontaneously brought the students irrespective of classes and ages
together. One of the surprising factor is that students were brainstorming critical problems
beyond the text book. The students were learning the life cycles beyond the text book and were
questing for more information regarding caterpillar from other textbook or were simply
searching from the internet.
It has to be remembered that gone were the days when the much of the classroom time
was devoted to sing-song or the vertebral recital of the text book (Akyurek & Afacan, 2013).
Nowadays teachers makes much effort to ensure that the subject matter is appreciative to the
capability of the students (Roberts & Bybee, 2014). In this case it can be seen that Mary although
at first was doubting whether the caterpillar’s eggs would be of any use, but later on it was
surprised to see how the entire classroom was excited with the activity, they even started naming
the caterpillars and also volunteered to take them home (those who had mulberry trees). The
teachers here is truly an educator, who is vitally interested to develop all the capacities of the
child. But, while taking up project or heuristic method of teaching, it is necessary to maintain
discipline in the classroom. Hence, it is evident that the students were over excited to see the

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entire lifecycle of the caterpillar, touching them, which might have provided a chaotic situation
in the class. A teacher who is normally eager to give his classroom a polished appearance often
deprives the pupil from the real opportunities, unlike Mary who had given ample chance to the
children to test their inquisitiveness and wanted to keep their creative juices flowing. Mary has
permitted the students to explore their understanding beyond the book and surf to external
websites and learn more about the life cycle of moth beyond the curriculum. Teaching can
never be boiled to the traditional algorithm of telling and testing (Laurillard, 2013). In the
scenario, the teacher had tried to stimulate interests by every legitimate ways she can devise as
the student maps out and proceeds with the activities. The students should carry on with their
own learning, but the teacher can help by pointing out the unnoticed obstacles, answering the
questions and furnishing the important information or sources for the research, assisting the
students to analyze their difficulties and providing them encouragement to the new sources of the
interest in the activity (Ollerenshaw & Ritchie, 2013).
Responding:
The reading has helped me to understand about the role of the teachers and the role of the
children in a teaching –learning experience. This case has helped me to understand the teaching-
learning relationship between Mary and her students and how the teacher had extended the
activity beyond the conventional form of learning . Teaching can be considered as a sublime art
and children are raw materials with which the teacher has to deal with. Şahin and Levent (2015),
has pointed out that children are a block of marble, education is the human soul and the teacher
is the sculptor (Freeman et al., 2013). An artist creates wonders with inanimate objects and
imparts life in it. Teacher cannot give any shape to a living material that he encounters, the child
is a growing and a developing human being of her own and reacts to teaching. The teacher

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should not try to make blind followers, but the influence of the teacher might guide the
behavioral patterns in children.
By learning this piece, I have understood that practical science activities can have
significant impact on the learning process of the children and helps a lot to engage the students in
brainstorming, group discussions, develop important skills, understand the process of scientific
investigation and develop a broad understanding of the scientific concepts. Learning of science
should always be accompanied by hands on activities that allows to make discoveries own their
own (Kawalkar & Vijapurkar, 2013). Critical thinking skills among the children are enhanced
during these activities. Children should be involved in planning the science activities (Hassard &
Dias, 2013). I can relate Mary’s experience with my own experience. For example, here it can
be seen that, the caterpillar’s helped in the understanding of the life cycle of the butterflies. This
case relates to one of my experience, where I was entitled to teach the chapter “germination of
seeds”. There were few couple of experiments on germination which I tried to teach the students,
but I found that mere lectures would not arouse their motivation. Hence, the very next day, I
bought some wet mud and few gram seeds in to the class. With the help of my students, I planted
them in the pot and the kept them in front of the sunlight. The seed germinated, it took almost 7-
8 years for the germination of seeds, nevertheless, the entire process has helped the children to
learn about the germination and the growth factors facilitating germination. Furthermore, I
believe that STEM learning should take place for effective science learning. The word STEM
stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (Laurillard, 2013). Science is
everywhere around us and is responsible for each and every phenomenon occurring in nature.
Again, technology is continuously expanding in all the aspects of our life. It is essential to
understand that engineering is the basis of the building of roads and the bridges (Matthews,

4SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE PRIMARY YEARS
2015). Mathematics is needed in each and every occupation. In a nutshell science is involved in
every activities that we do in our daily life. Hence any curriculum that is based on STEM based
learning provides real life situations in front of the student. Such activity based learnings can be
helpful to spark the passion for the future career in the STEM field (Kawalkar & Vijapurkar,
2013).
Relating:
One current perspective of science learning is the constructivist views in the learning of
science, that suggests, that the learners can only make sense of the new situations in terms of
their existing understanding. The implication of such views are that the teachers needs to find out
the idea of the learners for taking in to account their teaching. Teachers needs to identify the
current understanding for helping them to restructure the ideas.
Constructivism has been a new approach of education, which claims that humans are
better able to understand the information that create themselves |(Bächtold, 2013). As per the
constructivist learning theory, learning can be referred to as a social advancement that involves
language, real world situation and collaboration within the learners. In this approach the learners
are in the center of the learning process. Again learning affected by the environment in which we
live or what we face, both he cognitive and the physical maturity. When the learners are
motivated exercises his determination and will to gather selective information, formulate the
hypothesis, and test the applications, interactions and the experiences for drawing verifiable
conclusions.
The role of the teachers in a constructivist classroom is different than the previous
traditional classrooms. Here, teacher is the facilitator and the guide who organizes, plans and

5SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE PRIMARY YEARS
guides the activities. The teachers assists the learners to accomplish the complex activities and
answers all the questions to the teacher (Bächtold, 2013). Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget are the
two eminent personalities in the development of the constructivist theories. According to Piaget,
the motivation for the teaching and the learning process is the predisposition of the learner for
ensuring a balance between the schemas and the environment. In order to explain the
constructivist theory Piaget had established that the four stages of proximal development.
According to the theory of constructivism, in order to provide a proper learning environment,
children should be permitted to construct knowledge that is meaningful for them. Again
according to Vygotsky’s theory of constructivism, development and learning are collaborative
and children are developed cognitively in the context of education and socialization |(Bächtold,
2013). The attention, memory, perception are transformed by the cognitive tools provided by the
history, context, culture traditions and language. It is evident from the story that the primary
teacher had tried to develop a classroom, where they will be exposed to real life situations. In the
classroom, it can be seen that the children creates their own concept by extensive researching
beyond the textbook. A Vygotskian classroom mainly consists of drawing, model, drama, field
trips, hands on scientific activities (Behrendt & Franklin, 2014).
The classroom in this story, is generally related to the Vygotsky types of classroom,
where the classroom stresses assisted exploration through teacher student and student-student
interaction. Some of the cognitive strategy that the group members bring are questioning,
summarizing, predicting and clarifying, which can be easily related to the classroom described
by Mary, where the teacher would be supporting the children to draw on their observations of the
world for making them sense the world and inform their decision making.

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Reconstructing:
The process and the ideas of science are of great importance to everybody. The major
flow of science education is to increase the flow of specialist scientist, engineers and
technologists, it can be argued that young people with special talents in science should be
identified as early as possible and has to be provide with specialized and highly focused in
science education (Bada & Olusegun, 2015).
However since childhood, my own experience as learner has shaped me up as a teacher,
who believes in activity based learning. Since, childhood I had always been attracted to science
based experiments due to my inquisitive nature. Classroom activities had always been found to
improve the team building skills, reinforced presentation in the learning concepts. Science
teaching along with the classroom activities taps in to a source of the energy and goodwill that
motivates the students to innovate and become adaptive to the changes (Bell, 2013). Through this
method, more interaction and better relationship can be obtained between the student and the
teachers. The students will remain motivated and will remain engaged in fruitful discussions.
Although activity based learning are ideal for the fostering scientific knowledge in pupil, buy
they are more likely to consume time and prevents the completion of the curriculum within a
given amount of time (Bell, 2013). According to my own values I believe that teachers should
act as painters, who will contribute to shaping up mentally. This is so like the Vygotsky
classroom, where dynamic support and constant guide is provided to the students based on the
needs of the learners, but no fore is dictated.
However, in future I intend to use more classroom activities in learning. In relation to
classroom activities, the usefulness of the Information technology should not be overlooked. Use

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of ICT in schools has been prove to be beneficial as there are scientific concepts which becomes
very difficult to understand unless a live demonstration or a graphical infographic is used.
Computers can be used to understand the quaternary structures of any scientific compounds.
Another consideration that should be appropriate for setting up an ideal learning environment is
using activities that are age appropriate. For example STEM based learning like making of a
catapult using Popsicle sticks for teaching the complex sciences like working of a pulley, using
real seeds to show germination of plants, using silkworm eggs to teach the life cycle, simple
activities of electromagnetism. In accomplishing the goal of making an activity reach
curriculum , it is necessary to plan the curriculum in such a way that there lies a balance between
the number of live demonstrations and the number of lecture classes (Freeman et al., 2016).
However, we also need to consider the other contextual factors like the socio-economic condition
of the school, which will inform the amount resources available for planning the science based
activities. However, I would admit that activity based learning helps to create a favorable
learning environment that helps the learners to better understand the concepts, creates interests
and desire for more learning m makes the classroom more structured and livelier.
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