Insects form a highly diverse taxonomic group, which has fundamental ecological functions, but is currently in a process of mass extinction. Here, we present the first cycle of design, implementation, and assessment of a didactic sequence oriented towards improving pre-service teachers' knowledge and appreciation of insect diversity. A…

Bees play a pivotal role in maintaining ecosystems and securing food for humankind. As such, it is crucial to shape a scientific understanding of bees for school students at a young age so as to value and protect the little creatures. This study is intended to identify teenage students' knowledge and understandings of bees in relation to…

The use of drawing as an assessment tool to reveal students' conceptions in biology specifically on human organs and organ systems is not new, however, there is a deficit in the literature that attempted to explore and reflect on its usefulness and relevance specifically, in eliciting students' preconceptions related thereto. Making use of a…

This study aims to understand middle and high school students' ecosystem knowledge including knowledge about the food web, food pyramid, and energy flow. The data were collected from 250 middle school and high school students. Students' drawings were used to collect data and coded as correct, wrong, or no answer. Then, students' wrong answers were…

Previous research indicates that young children, as young as preschoolers, spontaneously draw dihedral and cyclic symmetries in their representations of the natural world. This is an intriguing find because at this age children have barely had their first contact with formal geometry and, therefore, one would not expect to find a use of symmetries…

The current pandemic has highlighted the importance of hand hygiene as a preventive measure to avoid the transmission of diseases. It is a habit that should be reinforced during childhood, so that it lasts into adulthood. The main objective was to analyse and describe, through drawing, the mental schemas that 6-12 year-old pupils have about clean…

This study examines the development of the concept of the ecological niche among 10-11-year-old students and their ability to use this concept to give their opinions on the socially relevant and controversial possibility that wolf populations might be established in the mountains surrounding the school. A total of 21 elementary school students…

The topic of keeping livestock is very well suited to addressing the ecological, social, and economic aspects of the sustainable production of our food in school lessons. However, the production of animal-based foods is mainly outside the personal experience of children and young people. To derive relevant implications for teaching, this paper…

This study examines the drawings that 178 young children carried out on two different occasions separated by a period of one year to explain their understanding of the plant world. The pictorial content of the drawings was analysed in accordance to the categories that previous research has proved to be useful when it comes to gaining an insight…

This paper presents a study of children's ideas of the body's internal structure. Children between four and 13 years (N = 170) individually produced drawings. During each drawing session the children explained their drawings to a facilitator and added written labels either by themselves or, if they were too young to write, with the facilitator's…

In this study, firstly, university biology students' conceptual understanding and potential misconceptions concerning meiosis were studied. Secondly, an easily applicable drawing task was used to foster students' metaconceptual awareness which would help them to reach conceptual change. A quasi-experimental design with a non-equivalent control…

We studied the initial conceptions of 73 pre-service primary teachers regarding the concept of ecosystem and examined how their understanding evolved as a result of participation in an inquiry-based learning exercise. The inquiry process involved identifying students' initial conceptions, making them aware of these, comparison of their ideas with…

Many children learn about and experience animals in the everyday environment where they live and attend school. One way to obtain information about children's understanding of concepts or phenomena is by using their drawings in combination with written responses or interviews. This study assesses how much Slovenian students 10-15 years old (in…

Plant nutrition is a complex subject at any educational level therefore, identification of student's ideas regarding this scientific concept is important in order to define the best instructional learning method. In this study, we conduct a cross-age comparison of the conceptual understanding of compulsory students and prospective elementary…

Drawing activities are believed to be a useful methodology to gain insight into young children's thoughts and ideas related to a diverse range of research topics. In this respect, the study of drawings has proven to be a valuable procedure with a view to unravelling how the natural world is conceptualised in early childhood. The present study…