There has recently been significant emphasis placed on environmental education through, for example, the UN's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Despite this, there is still considerable debate within the literature as to how the aims of environmental education can be achieved within schools. It seems likely that if there is a lack…

This article considers the impact of the early stages of an international project, Gardens for Life (GfL), on children's perceptions of school gardening and on their learning. The project involved 67 schools in England, Kenya and India and focused on the growing of crops, recognising the importance of both the process and product of this activity…

This article reports the use of concept mapping to reveal patterns of student learning (or non-learning) in the course of master's level teaching for research methods. The work was done with a group of 12 postgraduate students, and the concept maps of four individuals produced "before" and "after" a single teaching intervention…

Purpose: This article reports on a study to identify "building blocks" for quality report cards for geriatric care. Its aim is to present (a) the results of the study and (b) the innovative step-by-step approach that was developed to arrive at these results. Design and Methods: We used Concept Mapping/Structured Conceptualization to…

There is growing recognition of the importance of helping children to develop an ability to think about biological and environmental issues in terms of systems interactions and impacts. Several progressions have been published that suggest how their conceptual understandings may develop over time. However these are not necessarily as informative…

In this article, a contribution is made to the discussion of reflection on the part of teachers. The discussion to date has shown that reflection must be broad and deep. However, just what constitutes broad and deep reflection and the relations between the two remain unclear. After consideration of the characteristics of broad and deep reflection,…

A number of case studies were examined to discover how introductory college biology instructors and their students use stories to make sense of biology concepts. Methods involved observing and transcribing stories told by four instructors over two semesters. Three instructors and 31 students were interviewed. Four story types were identified from…

This study aims to investigate the effects of concept maps, together with conceptual change texts, given to 11th grade students' on the subject of molecules carrying genetical information. The semistructured individual interviews were conducted with 5 upper class students to find misconceptions related to the subject. A success test was developed…

Working under an activity theory framework, the present study was designed to determine how the activity settings, individual and contextual, contributed to the instructional practices and understandings of test-only beginning special education teachers. Specifically, the focus of this study was to examine how teachers with no formal teacher…

As teacher educators better understand the recurved, holistic, and often deeply embedded ways in which teachers learn, they can better support meaningful professional preparation that serves teachers' careers, the students they teach, and the profession of teaching as a whole. This article uses the ecologically minded "teacher identity"…

Theme-based learning (TBL) refers to learning modes which adopt the following sequence: (a) finding the theme; (b) finding a focus of interest based on the theme; (c) finding materials based on the focus of interest; (d) integrating the materials to establish shared knowledge; (e) publishing and sharing the integrated knowledge. We have created an…

This paper uses case study methodology to investigate the subject conceptualisation of two geography teachers at a mixed-ability comprehensive school in the UK. The research used concept-mapping and semi-structured interviews to explore the teachers' understanding of their subjects, within the case study framework. Teachers were asked to describe…

In higher education, instructors' choices of both curricular material and pedagogy are determined by their beliefs about learning and teaching, the values of their profession, and perceived external constraints. Dissemination of research-based educational reforms is based on assumptions about that mental structure. This study reports the initial…

This paper introduces various visual models for the analysis and description of learning processes. The models analyse learning on two levels: the dynamic level (as a process over time) and the functional level. Two types of model for dynamic modelling are proposed: the session trace, which documents a specific learner in a particular learning…

By the end of their high school studies, students should be able to understand macroscopic and sub-microscopic conceptualization of acid-base behavior and the relationship between these conceptual models. The aim of this article is to ascertain whether grade-12 students have sufficient background knowledge to explain the properties of acids,…