1,721,479 research outputs found
Exploring the actual and potential rhetoric-reality gaps in environmental education and their implications for pre-service teacher training
No full textThe mismatch between the advocated views of theorists and the teaching realities in school environmental education is widely recognised. There is relatively little research examining the advocated practices of teachers themselves, other than already environmentally active teachers, to indicate the nature of the 'potential' rhetoric-reality gap that might exist if all constraints were removed, and teachers had a completely free choice in designing their own environmental education programmes. This article identifies such gaps by exploring current practices and teachers' views on selected components of environmental education, across a complete teacher training partnership. This information has been used to help prioritise the content and approaches used by pre-service teachers when conducting school-based environmental activities. The investigation reveals that although most schools lack a written policy on environmental education, most have a positive attitude towards the large majority of selected components and these are usually addressed in school. Teachers are not generally compelled to deliver aspects of environmental education that they deem inappropriate. Of the 10 components not currently addressed by most of these schools, the findings suggest that five would be added if constraining factors were removed, but a further five would remain absent. The overall potential rhetoric-reality differences in this case study are thus smaller than the actual existing differences, but still fall short of some theorists' goals. Within the pre-service training programme, efforts have been concentrated on components that are: (i) currently practised in most schools; and (ii) receive a positive response from most teachers, and this has resulted in markedly improved feedback from schools and trainees alike
Children's ideas about micro-organisms
No full textChildren's ideas about micro-organisms are poorly documented. This small-scale survey provides some up-to-date information and ideas for teachin
Children's ideas im astronomy A quasi-experimental study of knowledge acquisition and concept learning in the upper primary years of schooling
No full textAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN057076 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo
Anecdote, opinion and whim: lessons in curriculum development from primary science education in England and Wales
No full textOn 1 August 1989, the introduction of a National Curriculum of subjects to all maintained schools throughout England and Wales brought compulsory science education into the primary sector for the first time. As a direct result of its elevated profile and an immense amount of hard work and effort by teachers and other professionals responding to requirements, science education provision benefited enormously. Despite this, however, successive overhauls and radical revisions of primary science have brought about many questionable changes, some not necessarily for the better or resulting in improvement. This article presents a critical, analytical and personal review of the history and development of science in the primary school and draws attention to the need for care at times when classroom practices and expectations are driven by national science curricula that remain to be fully informed. Astronomy is used to contextualize some of the changes at their most extreme
1963 -- Correspondence, Unsorted -- letter, 1966-06-02
No full textLetter from Sharp, John T. to Sabin, Albert B. dated 1966-06-02.Sabin Collection Fair Use Policy</a
1965, Jan.-June -- Correspondence, Unsorted -- letter, 1965-03-04
No full textLetter from Sharp, John T. to Sabin, Albert B. dated 1965-03-04.Sabin Collection Fair Use Policy</a
Primary science: audit and test. Fourth edition
No full textThis popular, widely recommended, text helps you audit your knowledge of science and understand what learning you need to pass your course. A rigorous test helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses and can be revisited at key stages in your course as a tool to monitor and evaluate progress. The fourth edition has been updated in line with the new National Curriculum, includes more information on expanding and developing your knowledge of science and is linked to the 2012 Teachers’ Standard
The trouble with VAK
No full textDevelopments within education, psychology and the neurosciences have shed a great deal of light on how we learn while, at the same time, confirming for us all that learning is a profoundly complex process and far from understood. Against this background, and in this position paper, we consider the recent rise in interest in the concept of learning styles as VAK (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) in primary schools in England and Wales and begin to identify and interrogate some of the more bizarre and outrageous claims frequently used to legitimise and lend support to its validity. Through the casual acceptance and promotion of VAK, and its wider association with the notions of accelerated and brain-based learning, the complexity of learning as a whole is becoming increasingly trivialised and scholarship at all levels within certain sectors of the education community compromised
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