This study explores the potential of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in primary school education and investigates its impact on geography skills, learning achievement, and satisfaction. The purpose of the study is to assess the effectiveness of PBL as a student-centered approach in enhancing learning outcomes. The participants consisted of 43 grade 5…

This study investigates students' motivation during experimentation in geography lessons by implementing a newly developed experimental kit on soils (GeoBox) in Germany. The study focuses on a first evaluation by means of a one-group pretest/posttest design. Fifth-grade students (N = 166) answered a questionnaire pertaining to regular geography…

Experiments are an important way of working in the geography classroom. They promote and require numerous geographic skills. At the same time, experiments are only used comparatively rarely in geography lessons in Germany. In order to increase the frequency of experiments in the classroom and to better exploit their potential, GeoBoxes have been…

Present and future social and ecological challenges are complex both to understand and to attempt to solve. To comprehend the complex systems underlying these issues, students need systems thinking skills. However, in science education, a uniform delineation of systems thinking across contexts has yet to be established. While there seems to be…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is an innovative approach which attempts to comprise holistic features, focusing on the meaning and at the same time providing opportunities for purposeful language use (Dalton-Puffer, 2007). Based on the triptych language of learning, language for learning and language through learning- this program…

Including in a novel information about relief, climate, vegetation, fauna and various aspects of socio-economic life can make literature a real source of geographical information. Using realistic literary works in Geography lessons has multiple benefits, which are not limited only to geographical knowledge. In this paper there are some fragments…

Almost eighty years ago, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, founder of Bank Street College of Education in New York City, wrote about social studies in ways that sound remarkably contemporary: "In the first place, we shall say that the curriculum should continue the laboratory methods, which means it should furnish the children with as many first-hand…

Mathematical modeling, a practice standard in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (CCSSI 2010), is a process by which students develop and use mathematics as a tool to make sense of the world around them. Students investigate a real-world situation by asking mathematical questions; along the way, they need to decide how to use…

This article introduces the fifty states project, a year-long study of the United States that uses crowd sourcing to bring authentic materials into the social studies classroom. The project started five years ago, when author Kelly McPherson decided that she wanted to have a care package sent from all 50 states to help students learn about the…

This study explores the effects of geographic information systems (GIS) curriculum on fifth-grade students' spatial ability and map-analysis skills. A total of 174 students from an urban public school district and their teachers participated in a quasi-experimental design study. Four teachers implemented a GIS curriculum in experimental classes…

In 2010 1.1 million pupils took private lessons in Germany, with 25% of all German children by the age of 17 having attended paid private lessons at some point in their school career (Klemm & Klemm, 2010). The high demand for support for learning curricular content led us to consider an integrated solution that speeds up both the design of…

Reading for learning frequently requires integrating text and picture information into coherent knowledge structures. This article presents an experimental study aimed at analyzing the strategies used by students for integrating text and picture information. Four combinations of texts and pictures (text-picture units) were selected from textbooks…

Data Day, an event that is the culmination of a multiple-week unit, is the perfect opportunity to work across disciplines and, in particular, aligns beautifully with skills and objectives geography teachers work on with their students. Bruce Jones at The Blake School in Hopkins, Minnesota, was the originator of Data Day. Jones described the…

This comprehensive book offers a practical pathway for developing twenty-first-century skills while simultaneously strengthening content-area learning. "Digital Learning" contains a wealth of research-based practices to integrate the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) National Education Technology Standards (NETS) for both…

The implementation of a computer game for learning about geography by primary school students is the focus of this article. Researchers designed and developed a three-dimensional educational computer game. Twenty four students in fourth and fifth grades in a private school in Ankara, Turkey learnt about world continents and countries through this…