How teachers’ practices enhance the development of children’s scientific literacy skills

Elementary science education across the world aims to nurture children’s knowledge and skills to reinforce a scientifically literate society. In working towards achieving this goal, elementary school teachers need to create opportunities for every child to develop at least a basic proficiency in scientific literacy. This is a demanding responsibility because some children develop more proficiency in scientific literacy than others until the end of elementary school. Elementary school teachers thus face the challenge of educating a heterogeneous group of children that differ regarding their entry and achievement levels. Currently, educational research is still in an early stage of investigating how elementary teachers can respond to the children’s heterogeneous needs in science education and which skills and attitudes help the teachers with this challenge. The current PhD project aims to provide some answers to these questions.