ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the actions that teachers can take to help children's progress in developing scientific ideas. It introduces different ways of looking at the process of progression, whether as moving along a predetermined route that is the same for everyone or following individual pathways. The chapter focuses moves from general features of progression to how to help individual learners or groups develop more scientific ideas. Bigger ideas are constructed on the basis of social and educational interactions as well as their own thinking, and reflect and apply to wider experience. Step-ladder model assumes a linear development of ideas that is suitable for all learners. The parallel strand model offers a compromise, as long as the relationship of each strand to the overall big idea is maintained. This implies that the pedagogy has an important role in accommodating the learning needs of individual children within a common framework.
