The ecological footprint as an educational tool for sustainability: A case study analysis in an Israeli public high school

Education is widely acknowledged to be a means for advancing environmental sustainability. Many schools have recently introduced the idea of sustainability into their educational agenda and curriculum. This study uses an innovative method of communicating the principle of sustainability, the ‘Ecological Footprint’ Analysis, which illustrates the impact of community lifestyles upon the natural environment. This paper describes the process of integrating the concept of the ecological footprint at the high school level, analyzes the school's ecological footprint, and discusses its contributions to education for sustainability in schools.     

Sound Stuff? Naïve materialism in middle‐school students’ conceptions of sound

Few studies have dealt with students’ preconceptions of sounds. The current research employs Reiner et al. (2000 Reiner, M., Slotta, J. D., Chi, M. T. H. and Resnick, L. B. 2000. Naïve physics reasoning: A commitment to substance‐based conceptions. Cognition and Instruction, 18(1): 1–34. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) substance schema to reveal new insights about students’ difficulties in understanding this fundamental topic. It aims not only to detect whether the substance schema is present in middle school students’ thinking, but also examines how students use the schema’s properties. It asks, moreover, whether the substance schema properties are used as islands of local consistency or whether one can identify more global coherent consistencies among the properties that the students use to explain the sound phenomena. In‐depth standardized open‐ended interviews were conducted with ten middle school students. Consistent with the substance schema, sound was perceived by our participants as being pushable, frictional, containable, or transitional. However, sound was also viewed as a substance different from the ordinary with respect to its stability, corpuscular nature, additive properties, and inertial characteristics. In other words, students’ conceptions of sound do not seem to fit Reiner et al.’s schema in all respects. Our results also indicate that students’ conceptualization of sound lack internal consistency. Analyzing our results with respect to local and global coherence, we found students’ conception of sound is close to diSessa’s “loosely connected, fragmented collection of ideas.” The notion that sound is perceived only as a “sort of a material,” we believe, requires some revision of the substance schema as it applies to sound. The article closes with a discussion concerning the implications of the results for instruction.     

Young children's perceptions of due process in schools’ disciplinary procedures

This study explored how children of lower primary school grades perceive due process in schools’ disciplinary procedures. While many studies have explored how adolescents perceive school discipline, only a few studies have examined the perceptions of primary school pupils, and no study has investigated lower primary school grades. The qualitative research design was based on semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with 70 children, aged 7 to 10, recruited from 19 public schools in Israel. In addition, we recruited a children's advisory group that participated in the research process. The findings revealed that while many of the study participants had internalised a formalistic approach to due process (i.e. meting out uniform punishments in similar cases, in accordance with a closed system of rules), others objected to this approach, providing various reasons for their concerns. Participants’ criticisms of a formalistic due process policy included lack of compassion and lack of understanding of pupils’ social, academic or other difficulties, disregard of pupils’ voice, the complex task of discerning the truth, apprehension over a uniform punitive system and low efficacy of punishments. We argue that the right to due process in schools lies at the intersection of legal and educational narratives. Even young children are able to recognise the inherent incongruity of these narratives, as they constitute a significant part of their daily routine in school. We also argue that this incongruity engenders a distorted due process, thus imparting faulty lessons about the right to due process and its justifications.     

School-Based Management as a Factor in School Effectiveness

Advocates of a policy of greater autonomy for schools in the public education system argue that such a policy makes for more effective schools. This article, based on a study carried out in Israel, examines how important the autonomy factor is in influencing school effectiveness as measured by such criteria as teachers' sense of motivation and commitment to the school. While welcoming the trend towards greater autonomy for schools, the author argues that further research is needed before we can formulate any theory concerning the relationship between school autonomy and school effectiveness.     

On Being a Sports Historian in Israel

Abstract

The article discusses the way I came to be a sports historian in Israel and the status of the history of sports in the State of Israel over the years.     

Relations between EFL teachers’ formal knowledge of grammar and their in-action mental models of children's minds and learning

We studied the relations between English as a foreign language teachers’ grammar knowledge and their in-action mental models (MMs) of children's minds and learning. The grammar knowledge we examined was English wh-constructions. A total of 74 teachers completed an assessment task and were classified to have deep, intermediate or shallow knowledge. Ten teachers (five with deep and five with shallow level) were videotaped teaching wh-questions. The data were analysed qualitatively to determine the teachers’ MM, and then quantitatively to test similarities/differences in their MM's expression. The findings revealed an identical MM among all teachers that is expressed differently as a function of knowledge level.     

Understanding Children's Comprehension of Visual Displays of Complex Information

Developing students' ability to interpret the vast amount of quantitative data they encounter on a daily basis has become a major task for today's educators. However, very little attention has been given to students' strategies of analyzing multivariate data. This study investigated how students interpret and analyze multivariate data organized in tables and the nature of external visual displays that they tend to create and use for this purpose. Ten middle school students were asked to think aloud while solving five problems demanding an analysis of data organized in tables. The students were then interviewed. Results indicated that (1) students based their conclusions on only part of the data; (2) students did not use either efficient or sufficient visual representations; (3) students did not apply mathematical operations efficiently; and (4) students referred to or built a context to the problem. The results of the current research may assist educators to design efficient curricula while being aware of and taking into account (1) students' difficulties in employing previously learned mathematical devices to analyze data, (2) students' skills in choosing appropriate and efficient visual representations to present and interpret the data, and (3) strategies employed by students in analyzing multivariate data.