The objectives of the ONU Agenda 2030 and the actions outlined in 2020 in the
European agenda for skills underline the importance of bringing students closer to
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects and consequently
promote scientific education to accompany schools in the ecological and cultural
transition. The global and European recognition of the importance of developing
learning paths that immediately introduce children to scientific disciplines raises
the need to think about learning environments and teaching paths that effectively
promote the development of scientific thinking. The approach to STEM disciplines
should be interdisciplinary and develop disciplinary and transversal skills, such as
creativity, critical thinking, reasoning, and social, economic and environmental
skills. The Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) is an example of
an authentic inquiry approach, which promotes and fosters students’ scientific
abilities with active learning settings and activities. In this study, we focus on an
example of how to develop children’s scientific thinking using the ISLE approach.
From a cognitive and non-cognitive point of view, we recognise the main features
of the activated process in the learning sequences and identify patterns in their
physical “babbling” reasoning, which is sustained by the teacher’s scaffolding.
