Contact with living animals is an exceptional possibility within biology education to facilitate an intense immersion into the study topic and even allow for a flow experience (Csikszentmihalyi 2000). Further, it might affect the perceptions of the students' basic needs for autonomy and competence and thereby their quality of motivation (Deci and…

Interventions in out-of-school settings have been shown in previous studies to effectively increase students' science knowledge and motivation, with mixed results on whether they are more effective than teaching at school. In this study, we compared an out-of-school setting in a reptile and amphibian zoo (Landau, Germany) with a sequence of…

Numerous studies have been conducted regarding alternative conceptions about animal diversity and classification, many of which have used a cross-age approach to investigate how students' conceptions change over time. None of these studies, however, have investigated teachers' conceptions of animal classification. This study was intended to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the knowledge, skills, and dispositions enabled for elementary school participants in two summer herpetology programs, one in North Carolina and one in Florida. An additional purpose of this study was to examine the normative scientific practices in which participants engaged and to describe how these…

The story from the museum may not be read by visitors, who come with their own knowledge and understanding and read a different story in the animals. The visitors read a story which makes sense to them and builds on what they already know and interests them. Increasingly, robotics models are being used in natural history museums, science centers,…

This article discusses how a brief project-based unit promoted the learning of children in a first-grade classroom. The children attended a public elementary school located in a southeastern university town in the United States. Approximately 94% of the students in the school were from economically disadvantaged families. No children in this…