Environmental Education in Finland – A Case Study of Environmental Education in Nature Schools

Eila Jeronen,

Juha Jeronen,

Hanna Raustia

Published: Jan. 10, 2009

The article aims to introduce Environmental Education (EE) in Finland and to discuss how it has been taken into account in Finnish nature schools. Firstly, we present EE models used in Finland. Thereafter we describe a qualitative case study on EE in nature schools (NS). The aim of the study was to get information for the development of EE. The research questions were: Who are the visitors to NSs? What are the educational aims in NSs? What kind of educational methods and approaches do NS teachers use? The resultant data for the questions from 1 to 3 is based on …

Science Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices: Issues, Implications and Research Agenda

Nasser Mansour

Published: Jan. 10, 2009

The study of teachers’ beliefs forms part of the process of understanding how teachers conceptualize their work which in turn is important to the understanding of teachers’ practices and their decisions in the classroom. A growing body of research argues that teachers’ beliefs should be studied within a framework that is aware of the influence of culture. These studies also argue that teachers’ beliefs and practices cannot be examined out of context. This shows that the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their practices is complex and context dependent. Some researchers have found consistencies between teachers’ beliefs and their practices whilst …

Using the Deficit Model, Public Debate Model and Co-production of Knowledge Models to Interpret Points of View of Students Concerning Citizens’ Participation in Socioscientific Issues

Chantal Pouliot

Published: Jan. 10, 2009

In the first part of this article I propose a conceptual framework – based on the deficit, public debate and co-production of knowledge models articulated by (Callon, 1999) – with which to examine students’ appropriation of de socioscientific issues (SSI). The second part of this article presents the way a group of three post-secondary/preuniversity students described the attitudes, interests and capacity for understanding of citizens concerned by the controversy surrounding the use of cellular telephones, and how they viewed the conditions under which citizens could contribute to public debates. This study was conducted on the basis of an ethnographic approach. …

The Effect of Type of Instruction on Expression of Children’s Knowledge: How Do Children See the Endocrine and Urinary System?

Pavol Prokop,

Jana Fančovičová,

Sue Dale Tunnicliffe

Published: Jan. 10, 2009

Children’s knowledge about human anatomy can be examined through several different ways. Making a drawing of the internal features of the human body has been frequently used in recent studies. However, there might be a serious difference in results obtained from a general instruction to students (What you think is inside your body) and specific (e.g. Draw bones that are inside your body) instruction. We examined relationships between these two types of instructions using drawings of the urinary and endocrine systems as the examples with pupils aged 10-14 years. An ANCOVA showed significant relationships between general and special instruction, but …