Scientists at play: teaching science process skills Sometimes in the wealth of detail of modern science, we lose sight of the unifying factor: the scientific method. Alfredo Tifi, Natale Natale and Antonietta Lombardi explain how they encourage the skills of enquiry, hypothesis and testing.Process skills are fundamental to science, allowing everyone to conduct investigations and reach conclusions. We are convinced that there is a serious educational gap in this area, both in bringing these skills into the classroom and in training teachers to do this. It is obviously a multifaceted problem, which involves school administration and teacher education, as well as the development by students of the necessary social skills to collaborate effectively, share, debate, defend and extend ideas in groups. To facilitate the introduction of science-enquiry principles in school, we developed a set of lab activities for use in primary and secondary schools.Most school science practical lessons are based on content: doing experiments to determine the variables that affect bean growth, for example. Even when those practical sessions are well managed, the contents often overwhelm the process of investigation, preventing students from extrapolating what they are doing to more general principles of scientific method. To develop a scientific way of thinking, students need "multiple opportunities to work with these skills in different content areas and contexts"w1.