Promoting development through constructing appropriate environments: Preschools in Reggio Emilia,Italy

Over twenty years ago, Thelma Harms, an authority on developing scales to ascertain the environmental appropriateness of classrooms for young children, wrote about evaluating early childhood environments from a child's viewpoint. Harms's focus was: To a child, everything in a setting is a potential stimulus. In other words, the relationship between adults and the child, the interactions, space, and materials all affect the overall environment. The efficacy of this focus is that it takes into account the environmental factors that contribute to the child's behavior in those settings. “Environmental awareness is as significant to a teacher as to any artist. By recognizing that environment is an interplay between materials, people and time schedules, the teacher can create a more productive setting for learning” (Harms, 1970).     

Interactive learning in an urban environmental education online course

Online courses play an increasing role in professional development of environmental educators, yet little information is available on the interactive processes involved in online learning. We examined the relationship of three types of interactions in an urban environmental education online course – participant–participant, participant–instructor, and participant–content – to four course outcomes: participants’ motivation to learn, intent to adapt ideas and information learned through the course in their practice, actual adaptation of ideas in their practice, and development of professional networks. Content analysis was used to characterize participants’ and instructors’ weekly online posts and comments, and generalized estimation equation modeling was used to explore the relationships between interactions and outcomes. The results showed that participant–content interaction had significant positive relationships with participants’ motivation to learn, intent to adapt ideas, and adaptation of ideas. Participant–participant interaction had significant positive relationships with participants’ motivation to learn, and development of professional networks with each other. Finally, participant–instructor interaction had a significant positive relationship with participants’ development of professional networks. The results of this study can be used to improve professional development online courses for environmental educators.     

Online professional development for environmental educators: strategies to foster critical thinking and social interactions

Abstract

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer opportunities for professional development of environmental educators globally, yet we lack understanding of participants? cognitive and social learning processes and of how instructors can enhance these processes. Based on the Community of Inquiry framework, we used a survey and coded participant discussion board and Facebook posts to examine the cognitive, social, and teaching presence in the Environmental Education: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Addressing Wicked Problems MOOC, offered by Cornell University. Rather than train educators in a specific curriculum, the goal of the MOOC is to expand educators? critical and transdisciplinary thinking about the field of environmental education and to enhance social interactions to support learning, educators, and knowledge co-creation. Results indicate that cognitive presence is higher on the discussion board whereas social presence is higher on Facebook. Over half of cognitive posts focused on exploration, a lower level of learning, whereas just less than a fifth reflected higher level integration, suggesting room for enhancing cognitive learning. Our results suggest strategies to encourage higher levels of thinking and more meaningful social interactions to foster learning, educator support, and co-creation of knowledge, thereby improving online professional development.     

A parser for on-line search system evaluation

This paper describes a computer program which converts the text of user input and system responses from an on-line search system into fixed format records which describe the interaction. It also outlines the syntax of the query language and the format of the output record produced by the parser. The study discusses problems in constructing the parser, the logic of the parser and its performance characterestics, as well as recommendations for improving the process of logging on-line searches.     

Vexing questions that sustain sensemaking

Current science education reforms highlight the importance of students making sense of scientific ideas. While research has studied how to support sensemaking in classrooms, we still know very little about what drives students to pursue and persist in it on their own. In this article, we use a set of parallel case studies of undergraduate students discussing introductory physics to show how certain student-generated, vexing questions both initiate and sustain students' sensemaking processes. We examine affective and linguistic markers in student discourse in paired-clinical interviews to demonstrate both of these functions of vexing questions and detail their role in the explanations students construct. We conclude by discussing the implications of this analysis both for supporting sensemaking in classrooms and for studying it in research.