In this article, we describe our students-as-partners process for bringing undergraduate and academic staff together to develop a mobile application (app) -- CampusFlora -- for use across our campuses. Our project at the University of Sydney, Australia, was conceived as a way to improve the botanical literacy of biology students by engaging…

Science and technology development in the 21st-Century has been demanding educators to provide learning activities which stimulate students' critical thinking skills. This study aimed to find out the correlated factors of the students' critical thinking skills as well as of which was the strongest determinant in leveling the skills. The subject of…

A two-week experiment is presented in which students can observe the impact of nanoparticles on the concentration of chlorophyll in plants. First-year students in an introductory nanotechnology laboratory course and a general chemistry laboratory course synthesized silver nanoparticles and then exposed stalks of "Egeria densa" ("E.…

Evidence is mounting that children have decreasing exposure to the natural world, which makes sense as the population of the planet urbanizes and many interests and assignments involve digital technology. According to the United Nations, 54% of the world's population now live in cities (2014), and a 2010 study by the Kaiser Health Foundation found…

The authors describe how grade 4 students carried out an investigation about growing cucumbers (members of the curcurbit or gourd family) where they read information sources about seed variety; germinated seeds under different conditions; measured and partitioned growing spaces; collected and analyzed data on germination, true leaf growth, and…

This article describes how a farm-based class in the Great Lakes region investigated how plants and animals prepare for winter. Two groups of children, ranging in ages from three to five years old, had a farm, pasture, gardens, forest, and a pond available for exploration. A low teacher-to-child ratio was maintained, with one teacher to…

We report here the development of an inexpensive and engaging laboratory-based activity that can help students learn about the scientific method and the role of plant epicuticular waxes and surfactant function on waxy plant leaves as real life example in the agricultural industry. Three each of nontreated collard leaves ("Brassica…

This article offers a philosophical-empirical account of embodied skilful performance in the practice of plant biotechnology. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and others, we elaborate how skilful performance emerges from and through reciprocal relations encompassing the body-in-the-world and the world-in-the-body. The contribution of this…

Creating behavior change to mobilize transitions toward sustainability is a significant challenge of our time. Inspired by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's Farmer Field School, we developed a novel community-based education program to engage people in local sustainability topics. In the Sustainable Communities Field School…

This paper describes procedures by which two types of measures of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) were developed and validated: (a) PCK Survey and (b) PCK Rubric. Given the topic-specificity of PCK, the measures centered on photosynthesis as taught in high school classrooms. The measures were conceptually grounded in the pentagon model of PCK…

In the increasing pervasiveness of today's digital society, mobile devices are changing the face of education. Students can interact with mobile devices in context-aware environment. This paper presents a mobile application based on expert system (Plant-E) for students to acquire knowledge about plant classification by answering decision-making…

Early detection, rapid response is a critical component of invasive plant management. It can be challenging, however, to detect new invaders before they become established if landowners cannot identify species of concern. In order to increase awareness, eye-catching postcards were developed in Washington State as part of a noxious weed educational…

This study presents a new technique, the "Which plant am I?" game, which helps to increase pupils' plant knowledge, while motivate them to become familiar with more plants. On the other hand pupils' plant knowledge was tested in Serbia. The "Which Plant Am I?" game was tested with two groups of pupils (in average 11 years old).…

The finding that under split-attention conditions students learn more from a picture and spoken text than from a picture and written text (ie, the modality effect) has consistently been found in many types of computer-assisted multimedia learning environments. Using 58 fifth-grade and sixth-grade elementary school children as participants, we…

Purpose: This study reports on the comparison of students' knowledge about mangrove conservation and their attitude into mangrove ecosystem between students who live in mangrove ecotourism area and those who live outside of mangrove ecotourism area. Methods: About eighty students from public junior high schools located inside mangrove ecotourism…