Reconsidering the roots of current perceptions: Saint Pierre,Helvetius and Rousseau on education and the individual

Historians and philosophers of education tend to emphasise the contribution of Rousseau to the development of individualistic trends in modern education. However, other eighteenth‐century thinkers also took part in the quest to bring the individual and his happiness to the centre of contemporary educational discourse. The work of some of these thinkers, although highly influential in the time of its publication, has been neglected and consequently forgotten. This article examines the place attributed to the individual in the educational works of two of the most prominent of these thinkers, Castel de Saint Pierre (1658–1743) and Claude Adrian Helvetius (1715–1771). In this article, it is argued that Saint Pierre and Helvetius’ perception of the individual’s place in education is closer to contemporary views than the one found in Rousseau.     

Environmental Problems,Causes, and Solutions: An Open Question

In a national evaluation of environmental literacy in Israel, (Negev, Sagy, Garb, Salzberg, & Tal, 2008 Negev, M., Sagy, G., Garb, Y., Salzberg, A. and Tal, A. 2008. Evaluating the environmental literacy of Israeli elementary and high school students. Journal of Environmental Education, 39(2): 3–20. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the authors included both multiple choice questions and open questions. In this article the authors describe the qualitative analysis of the answers to an open question regarding a local environmental problem. Most participants specified solid waste, open spaces, or air pollution as the main issues. The perceived solutions were generally at the governmental level, including planning, infrastructure, legislation, and enforcement. The authors describe relations in these responses between the problems, their causes and solutions, and between the quality of these answers and the general environmental literacy of the participants. The authors end with a discussion of the special contributions and potential of open-ended questions for environmental education research.     

Decision-making modes regarding the inclusive dilemmas of students with educational challenges in mainstream classrooms

In the last 20 years, increasing numbers of students with educational challenges (SECs) have been included in mainstream schools. Inclusion creates complex classroom situations for mainstream teachers who need to have excellent decision-making skills and the ability to face and resolve ethical dilemmas. College students and pre and in-service teachers were asked about their attitudes towards SEC inclusion, as well as three open-ended dilemmas during vignettes depicting challenging situations in inclusive class forcing decision-making. An online closed and open-ended questionnaire was administered (n = 489). The analysis revealed significant differences in the type of solution to these dilemmas in the three groups. There was a significant interaction between high sensitivity to the feelings of the inclusive students and the participants' overall tendency to support the inclusion of the SECs, positive attitudes towards inclusion, low expression of stigma and a higher sense of self-efficacy. Implications and practical offers are discussed.     

Exploring student perceptions of the learning environment in four health professions education programs

Learning Environments Research - The desire to support student learning and professional development, in combination with accreditation requirements, necessitates the need to evaluate the learning...     

The Effects of Mindful Movement Intervention on Academic and Cognitive Abilities Among Kindergarten Children

Early Childhood Education Journal - Evidence suggests that acting mindfully, that is, by stressing the purpose of the action and monitoring its current state, may benefit health, wellbeing, and...     

Reflective Practice as a Means for Preparing to Teach Outdoors in an Ecological Garden

Although teachers are engaged in many field-trips, they seldom have the pedagogical knowledge and experience to enact them. This article presents an effort to support reflective practice of teachers in the outdoors. The teaching experience of five pre- and in-service teachers included preparation for teaching in the outdoors, designing learning materials, teaching elementary and junior-high school students in an ecogarden, and reflecting upon these teaching experiences. The data collected by teachers and researchers highlighted challenges such as lack of confidence, class management and inadequate student motivation. The group and the instructors’ support and collaboration and careful preparation yielded a positive outdoor teaching experience. We suggest that supported field experience followed by individual and group reflection are promising in encouraging teachers to carry out outdoor learning activities.     

The learning environment of natural history museums: Multiple ways to capture students’ views

This article describes an initial attempt to find out students’ perceptions of class visits to natural history museums, with regard to the museum’s role as a place for intellectual and social experience. The study followed up approximately 500 Grades 6–8 students who visited four museums of different sizes, locations and foci. Data sources included the Museum Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (M-CLES), which was adapted from Constructivist Learning Environment Survey, an open-ended question and semi-structured interviews with 50 students. The three instruments highlighted some differences in students’ perceptions of the visit. Opportunities for concrete experiences and cognitive and affective engagement were not covered by the M-CLES, while the nature of science was not discussed by the students in their responses to the open-ended item and the interviews. This suggests that each instrument has its advantages and limitations and, therefore, the three means for data collection enabled a complementary view. Based on our findings, we suggest further development of museum learning environment surveys to capture students’ perceptions.     

Meaningful Learning through Art: Nature Photography,Haiku Writing,Mobile Technologies and Social Media as a Path to Oneself

The article describes a workshop that combines nature photography and haiku poems writing with the use of smartphones in an outdoor educational setting. The workshop's purpose is to enhance the experience of being close to nature by observation and introspection. The participants use photography and haiku‐writing as means of visual and textual self‐expression. While wandering in nature, they take pictures and then write haiku poems inspired by them. Later they upload their photos to a WhatsApp forum created for the workshop. At this stage, they can write new haikus, inspired by the pictures taken by other participants, and upload them too. By the end of the day, the participants have a joint artistic product that contains all photos and haikus created at the workshop. The photographs that were chosen as samples for this article are analysed with interpretive tools based on semantic theory and Barthes’ methodology, and take into consideration the Photovoice method's principles. The poems were analysed considering their content and artistic measures and in comparison, with haiku writing's principles, and then compared to the photographs’ visual content. The analysis shows that observing nature through the camera's eye and writing poems while close to nature can generate self‐expression and introspection. The use of mobile technology in the workshop does not intrude on the experience of being in nature; on the contrary, it is used to get the participants closer to it and to each other. The workshop described here contributes to the experience of meaningful learning through art.     

Action‐research and Food and Nutrition Security: A school experience mediated by conceptual graphic representation tool

This study deals with the development of a graphic representation tool as a way to support educational planning in an elementary school in the rural area of Brasilia (Brazil’s capital), aiming at the implementation of an integrated action‐research project focusing on hunger and nutrition. The graphic tool made it possible to promote dialogical–reflexive interactions among school teachers as to the identification of competencies and skills in elementary education curriculum and generating apprenticeship themes, scientific concepts, and educational activities. It also constitutes a useful tool for the teaching staff to realize the interdependences among the many school subjects, and to understand their practices, thus leading to self‐evaluation with greater awareness for potential for transformation.     

Intuitive Interference in Probabilistic Reasoning

One theoretical framework which addresses students’ conceptions and reasoning processes in mathematics and science education is the intuitive rules theory. According to this theory, students’ reasoning is affected by intuitive rules when they solve a wide variety of conceptually non-related mathematical and scientific tasks that share some common external features. In this paper, we explore the cognitive processes related to the intuitive rule more A–more B and discuss issues related to overcoming its interference. We focused on the context of probability using a computerized “Probability Reasoning – Reaction Time Test.” We compared the accuracy and reaction times of responses that are in line with this intuitive rule to those that are counter-intuitive among high-school students. We also studied the effect of the level of mathematics instruction on participants’ responses. The results indicate that correct responses in line with the intuitive rule are more accurate and shorter than correct, counter-intuitive ones. Regarding the level of mathematics instruction, the only significant difference was in the percentage of correct responses to the counter-intuitive condition. Students with a high level of mathematics instruction had significantly more correct responses. These findings could contribute to designing innovative ways of assisting students in overcoming the interference of the intuitive rules.