ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the action that teachers can take to help children’s progress in developing scientific ideas. It is now well established that by the time they come to the classroom children have already formed ideas about the things they have encountered and it is important to take these as the starting point. Some key characteristics of these ideas were identified in Chapter 5. Here we revisit them and suggest strategies teachers can use for helping children to develop more scientific ideas, that is, ideas supported by evidence and widely shared in the scientific community. Since the process of forming ‘bigger’ and more scientific ideas, as discussed in Chapter 6, depends on the use of inquiry skills, the development of these skills is a key factor in developing understanding and will be considered in Chapter 12.
