Making use of students’ research journals as instruments for detecting students’ reasoning in co-constructing scientific concepts in a German and Australian primary school

This chapter describes two cases, one from Germany and the other from Australia in which science journals were used in classrooms that adopted an inquiry-based approach to teaching science. We are interested in the following research questions: 1. In what ways do teachers use journals to promote student learning of science? 2. What evidence of reasoning is present in the cases in respect of the use of learning journals? 3. When and in which form is feedback given in journals?