How effective is training frogs to jump? This is perhaps the most frequent question in biology that is subjected to statistical analysis: does a treatment make a difference? One can examine whether there is indeed a training effect, by first assuming the opposite. That is, the authors assume that training has no effect on the mean distance jumped.…

When we say that good parenting is an ethical and not a technical matter, what is the nature of the warrant we can give for identifying one way of parenting as good and another as bad? There is, of course, a general issue here about the giving of reasons in ethics. The issue may seem to arise with peculiar force in parenting since parenting casts…

Epistemologies, ontologies, and education based on colonial Eurocentric assumptions have made animism difficult to explicitly explore, acknowledge, and embody in environmental research. Boundaries between humans and the "natural world," including other animals, are continually reproduced through a culture that privileges rationality and the…

The defensive withdrawal reflexes of "Aplysia californica" have provided powerful behavioral systems for studying the cellular and molecular basis of memory formation. Among these reflexes the (T-TWR) has been especially useful. In vitro studies examining the monosynaptic circuit for the T-TWR, the tail sensory-motor (SN-MN) synapses, have…

Histone acetylation plays a critical role during long-term memory formation. Several studies have demonstrated that the histone acetyltransferase (HAT) CBP is required during long-term memory formation, but the involvement of other HAT proteins has not been extensively investigated. The HATs CBP and p300 have at least 400 described interacting…

The aim of this qualitative case study was to explore the use of stories as tools for learning within formal and informal learning environments. The design was based on three areas of interest: (a) the story as a tool for learning; (b) the student as subjects engaging with the story; and (c) the context in which the story learning activity takes…

This article describes how one class at Douglas Jamerson Elementary School in St. Petersburg, Florida, a center for engineering and mathematics, incorporated an Engineering Design Process into its curriculum. At Jamerson Elementary, all students in kindergarten through fifth grade engage in teacher-created, integrated engineering units of study,…

Evolutionary history and structural considerations constrain all aspects of animal physiology. Constraints on invertebrate locomotion are especially straightforward for students to observe and understand. In this exercise, students use spiders to investigate the concepts of adaptation, structure-function relationships, and trade-offs. Students…

This article presents the transcript of the Presidential Address delivered to the Association for Science Education Annual Conference held at the University of Birmingham in January 2014. In her address, Alice Roberts traces the evolution of various features that are often thought to make humans different from other animals. Examples such as…

The purpose of this study was to make use of proposed definitions of environmental literacy to (1) guide the application of Rasch analysis and (2) utilize the developed instrumentation to further inform the work of environmental educators. A total of 2311 preservice teachers attending Faculty of Education departments of four public universities…

This study analysed the characteristics that children in the initial stages of schooling attribute to living beings. Interviews were conducted with 138 children aged 3-7 years in a school in the Spanish city of A Coruña, Galicia. Aspects found in pen-and-paper activities dealing with living beings, provided by the teachers (158 in total) at this…

Earth is experiencing a great mass extinction (GME) that has been caused by the environmentally destructive activities of humans. This GME is having and will have profound effects on Earth's biodiversity if environmental sustainability is not reached. Activities and curriculum tools have been developed to assist teachers in integrating the current…

This article reports on a study in which activity theory was used to design, implement, and analyze a 10-week curriculum unit about how honeybees collect nectar with a particular focus on complex systems concepts. Students (n = 42) in a multi-year kindergarten and 1st-grade classroom participated in this study as part of their 10 regular classroom…

Charles Darwin made numerous seminal contributions to the study of animal behavior over his long career. This essay places these contributions in the context of Darwin's life, showing his long-standing interest in psychological and behavioral issues encompassing all species, including humans. Ten areas are highlighted: natural history;…

Students' learning is assumed to be promoted through peer-group discussion. Most studies show the presence of qualitative improvements in either oral or written reasoning as a result of such interactions. However, knowledge on the relationship between talk qualities and text qualities is scarce. We adopt an explorative design using statistical…