Social learning and social abilities of first-grade elementary pupils in Greece: the importance of informal models of evaluation

The aim of this research is to examine how social learning is connected to the acquisition of knowledge and abilities. One hundred and nineteen ‘A’ grade students (60 boys and 59 girls) attending public primary school participated. The collection of data was carried out according to: (1) the ‘Athina’ Test (AT) and (2) teachers' evaluation. The students were divided into four groups according to the level of their social learning. A comparison between all the results of the AT evaluation and the teachers' evaluation is made. The results demonstrate a correlation between social learning and academic achievements.     

Students' argumentation in decision-making on a socio-scientific issue: implications for teaching

This study explores the arguments used by 14-year-old students in making decisions about the design of a road in their area. The whole activity was based on an actual problem at the time the research took place. The procedure was a sequence, where students worked first individually, then in groups and finally they had to take a class decision. Then they had to realize one of the final proposals and design the construction of a bridge that their planning had involved. This paper first elaborates the general perspective of such an approach; it then describes the process of argumentation and analyses the nature of the students' arguments, which are discussed on the basis of a specifically constructed network.     

The development of the concept of alive by preschoolers through a cognivive conflict teaching intervention

The aim of this research was the conceptual change and transformation of the intuitive conceptions of preschoolers concerning life through a cognitive—conflict teaching intervention. Young children use the criterion of movement to justify the classification of objects as living or non-living, that is classify plants as non-living because they are immobile and mobile non-alive objects as living. The concept of life includes many sub-concepts and movement is a secondary and not a universal characteristic of living organisms. The subjects of this research were chosen according to their replies concerning the classification of plants as non-living. Subjects of the experimental group received a teaching intervention aiming at the change of their conceptual context about life and focusing mainly at the dependence of an organism to its environment. In the teaching intervention we used the procedure of cognitive conflict through the juxtaposition of live organisms to dead ones and mobile simulations. Our results show that all the children of experimental group presented a conceptual change classifying the plant as alive and using explanations including the dependence on environment and other functions, increasing the number of criteria used for justification of the animal as living.