The sounds of birds form the outdoor playlist of our lives. Birds appeal to the public, in part because of the wide variety of interesting sounds they make. This popularity has led to a long history of amateur participation in ornithology, which has recently produced rapid increases in freely available online databases with hundreds of thousands…

Field trips provide real-world learning opportunities in biology education as they promote knowledge about nature among other things. As biodiversity is declining knowledge of species is important for understanding and appreciating the natural world and its implications. Many field guides are digitally available, but differences from traditional…

In the 1990s, classes throughout the United States began participating in Classroom FeederWatch, sending data on birds they had seen at feeders in their schoolyards to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The launch of eBird in 2002 opened up new possibilities for submitting data on all types of bird species, allowing users to record and upload…

Moreno Valley College, a two-year community college in Southern California, experiences an annual migration of cliff swallows. The presence of these birds inspired the development of the undergraduate research program Flying with Swallows. The assessment of the project indicated significant increases in qualitative student outcomes such as…

Although the scientific disciplines conduct practical work in different ways, all consider practical work as the essential way of connecting objects and phenomena with ideas and the abstract. Accordingly, practical work is regarded as central to science "education" as well. We investigate a practical, object-based palaeontology programme…

How can an engineer design a bird feeder that attracts many birds? This question resulted from kindergarten students' observations of the bird feeders in their school's bird sanctuary. The challenging question is the heart of project-based learning (PBL), a teaching strategy in which students tackle real-world problems and design projects to solve…

This research examined lifelong science learning reported by amateur astronomers and birders. One hundred seven adults who reported engaging in an informal (out-of-school) science interest were interviewed as part of an ongoing series of studies of lifelong science learners. The goal of the study was to gain insight into how and why amateur…

Science hobbyists engage in self-directed, free-choice science learning and many have considerable expertise in their hobby area. This study focused on astronomy and birding hobbyists and examined how they used organizations to support their hobby engagement. Interviews were conducted with 58 amateur astronomers and 49 birders from the midwestern…