Federal natural resource agencies are facing a human resource crisis. Many natural resource professionals are reaching retirement and attracting young adults to fill vacancies may prove difficult. Although currently on the rise from a recent fall, enrollment in natural resource degree programs has not increased overall in the past three decades,…

Learning and teaching are faced with radically new challenges in today's rapidly changing world and its deeply transformed communicational environment. We are living in an era of images. Contemporary visual technology--film, video, interactive digital media--is promoting but also demanding a new approach to education: the age of visual learning…

The odds that a school district might be asked to allow a service dog or miniature horse into one of its facilities have increased tremendously in light of new legislative changes. With those changes comes a host of fresh challenges for school administrators and policy makers--not the least of which are complex disability discrimination laws and…

We assessed developmental stability and context generalizability of temperament in pigtailed macaques ("Macaca nemestrina") from the University of Washington Infant Primate Research Lab. A principal components analysis condensed 6 behavioral measures into 2 components, interpreted as reactivity and boldness. Changes in these measures over the 1st…

This article explores Vygtosky's (1978) notion of the imaginary situation through analysis of interaction and activity in a Fifth Dimension after-school setting, one of a network of programs designed with an aim to realize developmental concepts proposed by Vygotsky and others in the cultural-historical tradition (see, e.g., Cole & the…

Movies depicting science-related issues often capture the attention of today's youth. As an instructional tool, movies can take us beyond the drama and action and thrilling scenes. In this article we share our experiences of using the movie "Eight Below" as a centerpiece for developing high school students' understanding of basic…

Learning, attentional, and perseverative deficits are characteristic of cognitive aging. In this study, genetically diverse CD-1 mice underwent longitudinal training in a task asserted to tax working memory capacity and its dependence on selective attention. Beginning at 3 mo of age, animals were trained for 12 d to perform in a dual radial-arm…

Children from England and the United States of America have a basic similar knowledge of plants and animals, which they observe during their everyday life. Nine children of ages 4, 6, 8, and 10 years, in each country, were asked to free-list plants and animals. Afterwards, they were interviewed individually about the plants and animals they listed…

Field experiments are at the core of ecology, yet rarely find their way into education, probably due to a combination of technical challenges and risks associated with fieldwork. This may compromise student education and perception of the subject, making interesting, readily manageable experiments extremely important. We describe how the daily…

The modern food system involves high consumption of natural resources and other forms of environmental degradation. This paper is a presentation of internet resources such as scientific contributions, graphics, tables, images, animations and interactive atlases that can help to teach this subject. The discussion contains some subjects considered…

Aged dogs exhibit a spectrum of cognitive abilities including a syndrome similar to Alzheimer's disease. A major impediment to research so far has been the lack of a quick and accurate test of visuospatial memory appropriate for community-based animals. We therefore report on the development and validation of the Canine Sand Maze. A 4.5-m-diameter…

A field trip to the local zoo is often a staple in many elementary school curricula. Many zoos offer free entry to local teachers and their students. Teachers take students on field trips to enrich the curriculum, make connections to what students are learning in school, and provide students with meaningful learning experiences (Kisiel 2007).…

We examined developmental changes in children's inductive inferences about biological concepts as a function of knowledge of properties and concepts. Specifically, 4- to 5-year-olds and 9- to 10-year-olds were taught either familiar or unfamiliar internal, external, or functional properties about known and unknown target animals. Children were…

This study investigated preschoolers' living kinds conceptualization by employing an extensive stimulus set and alternate indices of understanding. Thirty-four 3- to 5-year-olds and 36 adult undergraduates completed 3 testing phases involving 4 object classes: plants, animals, mobile, and immobile artifacts. The phases involved inquiries…

Rats were trained in a duration-comparison task to press one lever if the comparison duration ("c") was 1.2-s shorter than a standard duration ("s"), and another lever if c was 1.2-s longer than s. The interval between s and c duration was 1 s. The 10 duration pairs used during training controlled for the absolute duration of "c" and the total…