The objectives of this study were (1) to develop local-based learning activities in an integrated learning unit entitled "The Legend of Phra Yuen Kantharawichai" for grade 5 students; (2) to compare the student's academic achievement with a criterion of 80%; (3) to compare the students' historical process skills with a criterion of 80%;…

Interdisciplinary teaching and learning is an approach that synthesizes the curricular objectives and methods of two or more disciplines or subjects focusing on a specific topic or issue. While it is being increasingly implemented in universities, at lower levels of education there are still countries where science subjects are taught and learned…

This article presents the results of research on how ten-year-old children in an unfamiliar environment perceive the surroundings of the route during their wayfinding when they focus on the task of successfully orienting themselves with two different sources of cartographic support: a mobile navigator and a paper map. The results show that the…

This study investigated the inclusion of indigenous knowledge (IK) in the Amhara Region's new primary and middle school textbooks in a trial. For this purpose, book reviews of the three purposely selected primary and middle school textbooks were made. Besides, data were collected from 372 teachers and interviews were also made with 28 sample…

The introduction conveys some data on the system of education in India, about the place Geography occupies within the curriculum, and on geography teachers' training. In the first section of the paper, several features of the coursebooks in India are underlined: authors, editing, prices, and designing. Furthermore, an array of coursebooks for 4th,…

Present and future social and ecological challenges are complex both to understand and to attempt to solve. To comprehend the complex systems underlying these issues, students need systems thinking skills. However, in science education, a uniform delineation of systems thinking across contexts has yet to be established. While there seems to be…

Cognitive skills are associated with academic performance, but little is known about how to improve these skills in the classroom. Here, we present the results of a pilot study in which teachers were trained to engage students in cognitive skill practice through playing games. Fifth-grade students at an experimental charter school were randomly…

In this article, Kathryn Roberts & Kristy Brugar discuss their assessment of third-, fourth- and fifth-grade children's understandings of the types of maps commonly found in their social studies text and trade books, and the knowledge and misconceptions it revealed. They then discuss how teachers might begin to address those issues with…

Almost eighty years ago, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, founder of Bank Street College of Education in New York City, wrote about social studies in ways that sound remarkably contemporary: "In the first place, we shall say that the curriculum should continue the laboratory methods, which means it should furnish the children with as many first-hand…

Mathematical modeling, a practice standard in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (CCSSI 2010), is a process by which students develop and use mathematics as a tool to make sense of the world around them. Students investigate a real-world situation by asking mathematical questions; along the way, they need to decide how to use…

The population of the world is growing and moving. The overwhelming majority of people are on the move inside their own country and mostly towards cities while a minority moves from non-Western areas to the West. In Finnish geography, history and social science school textbooks, this mobility tends to be depicted differently depending on whether…

This study provides an in-depth investigation of Turkish primary school students' perceptions of geography. Gender differences in students' perceptions of geography were investigated, including definitions of geography and its field of study. The findings showed that "landforms," "our geographical regions/Turkey,"…

In 2010 1.1 million pupils took private lessons in Germany, with 25% of all German children by the age of 17 having attended paid private lessons at some point in their school career (Klemm & Klemm, 2010). The high demand for support for learning curricular content led us to consider an integrated solution that speeds up both the design of…

Reading for learning frequently requires integrating text and picture information into coherent knowledge structures. This article presents an experimental study aimed at analyzing the strategies used by students for integrating text and picture information. Four combinations of texts and pictures (text-picture units) were selected from textbooks…

Data Day, an event that is the culmination of a multiple-week unit, is the perfect opportunity to work across disciplines and, in particular, aligns beautifully with skills and objectives geography teachers work on with their students. Bruce Jones at The Blake School in Hopkins, Minnesota, was the originator of Data Day. Jones described the…