We propose to initiate a research program to study the development of science process skills, through the identification and description of these skills as they manifest themselves in the actual work carried out by children in elementary classroom settings. Insufficient research exists about how science procedural knowledge develops: how children learn to observe, measure, predict, devise experiments, etc. and how these skills develop with maturation and growth, especially in the social context of classrooms. Although these skills are part of many science curricula and appear in state guidelines and scope and sequence charts, they are seldom described developmentally. The proposed research will examine the emergence of these skills in classrooms through the analysis of observational data already collected and from observations in actual classroom settings. The ultimate purpose of this research is to make available a wider knowledge base to improve elementary science assessment.
