ABSTRACT
An emerging trend in education is the attempt to dynamically link ongoing research initiatives for advancing the quality of K−12 teaching and learning with the more generally evolving process of systemic school reform [e.g., No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Bush, 2001]. In advocating an operational strategy that integrates and applies para-digmatically different interdisciplinary research perspectives (e.g., Bransford, Brown, Cocking, Donovan, & Pellegrino, 2000) to the persistent problems of science education reform, this chapter is designed to raise the awareness of educational practitioners, researchers, and policy developers regarding the mechanisms associated with advancing (and the potential for) in-depth meaningful learning in science as a critical element in furthering school reform efforts, in general, and science education at the elementary level, in particular.
