Interacting with practitioners and understanding multiple, contradictory, and complex perspectives is an important skill for effectively managing terrestrial resources in the 21st century. Addressing these needs requires innovative approaches in higher education that elevate student learning outcomes and emphasize the affective learning domain…

A survey of introductory soil science or equivalent (ISS[subscript e]) instructors and courses at 79 institutions differing in land-grant status (38 land-grant, 41 non-land-grant) and Carnegie category (48 doctoral, 16 masters, 10 baccalaureate, 2 associate, 3 respondents did not identify by Carnegie classification) was conducted to collect…

This article describes activities in which students sample, investigate, classify, and compare characteristics (i.e., texture, color, density, porosity) of local soils, evaluating whether the soils are healthy or at risk. Students investigate correlations between geology and geography, predict which soil types may go extinct in their state, and…

The top-ranking world-class universities in agricultural science denote those universities which are globally popular with agriculture-related subjects. The paper synthesizes the results of three different ranking scales (NTU, QS and ARWU) of top 50 universities in agriculture subject in 2013. The overlapped parts have been synchronized to derive…

This study investigated how well 74 6th-grade science students represented text structures from a 900-word textbook chapter on soil conservation, given a concept map template with four superordinate terms and 24 unsorted concepts. Findings suggest students were more successful at classifying pre-selected terms under given superordinate categories…

The Zimbabwe Secondary School Science Project (ZIM-SCI) developed student study guides, corresponding teaching guides, and science kits for a low-cost science course which could be taught during the first 2 years of secondary school without the aid of qualified teachers and conventional laboratories. This ZIM-SCI study guide presents activities,…