Achieving a sustainable future requires that individuals adopt sustainable behaviors, which are often learned and cemented at a young age. Yet, traditional education efforts have been inadequate in fostering transformative change, in part because many programs focus on fact-heavy, teacher-centered techniques while neglecting the practices that behavioral and sustainability scholars highlight as central to creating change. To address this gap, the present research integrates three critical yet mostly disparate bodies of research— educational pedagogy, behavior change, and sustainability competencies. This interdisciplinary approach to education was implemented and evaluated with a small group of students during an intensive summer program and year-long case study. The curriculum focused on food and waste behaviors and utilized experiential, real-world, problem-based methods in order to increase competence in sustainability and promote pro-environmental actions. The impact of the program was assessed through surveys, interviews, videos, and participant observations. The data showed that significant changes in knowledge and behaviors were achieved, while suggesting that social knowledge in terms of food is more resistant to change as compared to that of waste. Throughout the year, students maintained significant behavior changes in terms of their waste decisions; however, sustainable food behaviors were more resistant to long-term change due to the students’ social and cultural environment. This article will detail the education program and assessment techniques while highlighting each student’s unique characteristics, barriers to change, and motivations for action. 

The purpose of the present study was to collect and analyze the research on environmental education in non-traditional settings in Turkey undertaken with various subjects (e.g. students, graduates and teachers) and published over the years of 2000-2011. For systematic analysis, selected data-bases and journals were scrutinized across five pre-determined criteria. The close examination resulted in 11 studies reporting the effects of the interventions (e.g. hands-on practices, field trip activities) and 4 studies reporting participants’ views on the effects of the interventions in general. Field trips, ecology-based nature education programs, nature camps and science education instruction in non-traditional settings were used as educational intervention in the selected studies. Later, these studies were subjected to content analysis to present the trends and to synthesize the common findings of the selected studies. The techniques and instructions used as the intervention in these selected studies were observed to contribute to development of participants’ gains associated with knowledge of the environment and nature, perception of nature, environmental affect, responsible environment behaviors and conception and understanding of science.  

The present study explores the use of a conventional school ground of a primary school and its potential as a space for creative play and environmental learning. Children’s play behavior and views of the school ground are explored, as well as their vision for its improvement. The research constitutes part of a wider school ground project and was carried out in a primary school in Volos city, Greece, during the 2010-2011 schoolyear. Geographical and participatory design methods were used that capture children’s experience of space and their will for participation in redesigning their school ground. They included mapping of the physical features of the school ground, children’s drawings, interviews with children, and observation and mapping of children’s behavior in the school ground. Results indicate that children primarily view their school ground as a space for recreation, play, relaxation, and communication with peers. They mainly emphasize structured, pre-constructed elements, such as the football and basketball grounds, or the kiosk, which they use in both conventional and unconventional ways. However, the participants do not seem to have developed an adequate sense of place and belonging in their school ground environment. The paper presents insights on children’s play behavior and views for their school ground, the role of children as participants in the school ground design, and design principles for the improvement of the school ground as they have emerged from the research.

Science teachers frequently select science news articles as supplementary teaching materials; however, the literature indicates that students encounter difficulties in examining and evaluating the news content and textual elements. This paper reports an instructional strategy of utilizing science news articles and investigates its effectiveness in enhancing students’ cognitive learning outcomes. In this quasi-experimental study, 118 seventh graders from four classes in one secondary school in Taiwan took part in the Science News Instruction (SNI). After eight weeks of instruction about Genetics and Reproduction, all students were requested to present their written arguments to the selected science news article. Two of the classes were prompted to link to their science content knowledge (the CK-SNI group, n=56), whereas their counterpart peers were not instructed to link to their science content knowledge (the SNI group, n=62). The analysis of students’ written artifacts revealed that the CK-SNI group performed significantly better on examining the data and claims made in the science news, producing warrants of higher quality to support their reasoning about the relationship between data and claims, and providing better reasons to refute the identified causal textual elements. Furthermore, the results of ANCOVA indicate that the CK-SNI group outperformed the SNI group on the cognitive test, with the largest improvement at Apply level (ηp2= .10). We conclude that prompting students to examine news content based on the content knowledge they learned is effective in fostering students to evaluate the science news critically, and thus make a positive impact on students’ cognitive learning.

The purpose of this study was to examine the changes in 19 preservice chemistry teachers’ understandings of the structure of matter, including the aspects of the physical states of matter, the physical composition of matter, and the chemical composition of matter, before, immediately after, and months after they received a specific instruction. The one-group pre, post, and delayed posttest design was used, and participants’ understandings before, immediately after, and months after the instruction were assessed using the same “three part particulate drawing” classification question constructed by Sanger (2000). Collected data were analyzed according to both the number of scientifically appropriate classifications, and the types and nature of scientifically inappropriate classifications made by preservice teachers. The results of these two analyses were quite parallel to each other and showed that this specific instruction promoted the development of participants’ scientific understandings of the structure of matter. It should be noticed that while the effect of the instruction appeared extremely positive based on the results of the statistical analyses which solely compared the number of scientifically appropriate classifications, it was reflected more accurately after the participants’ scientifically inappropriate classifications of the structure of matter were analyzed more thoroughly. It was also found that although some scientifically inappropriate classifications were changed to scientifically appropriate ones following the instruction, some of them reverted back to their initial status months after the instruction.

In the context of an education reform in Québec, this case study illustrates how a science teacher’s practice was redefined with nine classes over a period of four months on a specific, integrative theme inspired by issues of daily life in an attempt to increase her students’ motivation and to better make sense of some scientific concepts prescribed in the new curriculum. Activity theory was used as a theoretical and methodological framework to analyze the development of the activity and revealed to be a fruitful approach to better understand real-life and complex situations within a school community. Special attention was given to dynamic relations and changes that took place as the activity was unfolding. The contribution of the nine classes in the analyzed activity was possible due to the collaboration of several members of the school community who shared the same goals and who sought to transform the learning environment.

The objective of this research is to investigate students’ mental models of the hailstone formation and explore factors that may affect their mental models. The sample chosen for the study was composed of a total of 84 students. The students attended the 1st to 4 th grade classes of the Social Studies Teaching Programme at Giresun University in Turkey. The data in relation to the students’ mental models of hailstone formation were collected from the administration of a structured interview consisting of open-ended questions. The students’ responses were scrutinised and categorised to gather similar mental models into a group. The choice of categories was based on the students’ responses. Four groups mental models have been determined, one is scientifically acceptable and the others scientifically unacceptable. The prevalence of scientifically unacceptable mental models was attributed to the students' lack of pre-knowledge of hailstone formation. Considering the results of the study, recommendations for the teaching of hailstone formation have been made to teachers, textbook authors and programme developers.

In the present study we used the technique of word association tests to assess students’ cognitive structures during the learning period. In particular, we tried to investigate what students living near a protected area in Greece (Dadia forest) knew about the phenomenon of decomposition. Decomposition was chosen as a stimulus word because it represents a complex issue and was therefore suitable given the primary methodological objectives of this article. Specifically, we tried to develop a complete theoretical scheme for grasping aspects of complexity concerning the learning of biological concepts. Perhaps most importantly, we made an effort to introduce network analysis within the field of science education and evaluate its usefulness in assessing students’ knowledge structures. Network analysis was used to manage the data from the word association test and proved to be quite efficient. It became clear that such analysis may help researchers to relate cognitive structures with underlying patterns, including misconceptions. In our case study, such misconceptions stem from students’ knowledge gaps, mainly concerning holistic aspects of understanding decomposition.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the levels of energy literacy among 276 Form 2 (Grade 8) Malaysian students as no similar study has been previously conducted in the country, as well as the contribution of students’ energy-related knowledge and attitudes on their energy-related behaviors. This was a non-experimental quantitative research using the sample survey method to collect data by using the ‘Energy Literacy Questionnaire’ (ELQ). Independent samples t-test, Pearson product-moment correlation, and multiple linear regressions were used to analyse the data. The study found that levels of energy literacy were relatively low suggesting that the implemented curriculum had failed to meet the specifications of the intended curriculum that emphasises the relevance of energy-related issues to students’ everyday life experiences. The authors suggest that there is a need to emphasise the importance of a context-based curriculum specifying criteria that embrace broad energy literacy with benchmarks related not just to science-related energy content but also recognizing the importance of practical energy-related knowledge, decision making skills, value judgments, ethical and moral dimensions, and issues of personal responsibility related to energy resource development and consumption in Malaysia.