Background: Educators report needing relevant and authentic climate change educational resources (CCER). National parks are informal education centers that can provide CCER for educators. However, little is known about the CCER that exist across the national parks in the United States. Purpose: To increase the knowledge in this area, this study…

Scientific literacy is the ability that students must have to analyze and apply science concepts in solving everyday life problems. Students' scientific literacy on peatlands can be acquired by students from daily interaction with peatlands, understanding that comes from parents and the community, as well as from learning in the classroom. This…

Teaching science involves designing learning experiences that attend to a complex set of relationships between students, the discipline of science, and the places where science experiences are carried out. Unfortunately, with traditional approaches to K-12 science instruction, contributions to learning from students and places are often overlooked…

The Big Bend region of Trans-Pecos Texas preserves a rich record of Rio Grande rifting and Laramide-age contraction that provide intrigue to national and state park visitors and field trips for undergraduate geology students. Despite its well-exposed geologic record, the Big Bend region remains an underutilized natural laboratory for studying…

This research aimed to analyse the literature regarding Local and Indigenous Knowledge (LIK) in science teaching and learning. This research uses a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to identify articles focusing on studies regarding LIK in science education. This research explores 52 articles from Scopus and Web of Science published between 2014…

The vast and rapidly growing amount of science education research makes it challenging for researchers to navigate and synthesize developments across the field, particularly concerning broad concepts evolving along divergent paths. To address this issue, a novel review methodology employing bibliometrics and network analysis was tested to identify…

To combat environmental apathy, the authors seek to help students develop environmental knowledge, ethics, and "critical-thinking skills that will prepare them to evaluate issues and make informed decisions regarding stewardship of the planet". This article describes scientific, place-based investigations of local species and their…

This essay argues the importance of interdisciplinary, contemplative, place-based pedagogy. The Ecology and Colour in 1m[superscript 2] study has students from the sciences and the arts observe a small quadrat in their local community over several weeks, engaging in both scientific and creative expression. The connection to Aldo Leopold's teaching…

The research-based, Thailand-based learning progression for haze pollution developed by Ladachart, Poothawee and Ladachart opens a new front in the long-running debate over the compatibility of place-based education (PBE) with educational standards. This debate encompasses disagreement over whether PBE and standards are philosophically compatible…

In science education, there has been a sustained focus on supporting the emergence of science practices in K-12 and field-based settings. Recent work has elevated the integral role of emotion in sparking and sustaining such disciplinary practices, deepening the field's understanding of what is entailed in "doing" science. Yet even as we…

To enable learning to the fullest for whole development of children, theories stated that the children should be actively engaged during the learning process. However, Bhutanese classrooms predominately use traditional methods of teaching within the four walls. Like any other country, Bhutan's educational system gears up to use different teaching…

This dissertation explores the integration of Place-Based Scientific Inquiry (PBSI) into science education through participatory design-based professional development for instructors at Sky School, an outdoor education program in southern Arizona. PBSI emphasizes student-centered, inquiry-driven, experiential learning grounded in outdoor contexts.…

We humans are cultural and ecological beings. This is a study about children's drawing as a device for expressing intertwined cultural and ecological relations. Countless studies have examined children's drawing from psychological, anthropological, linguistic, and aesthetic perspectives, while recently posthuman perspectives have put forward…

During remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed and implemented a place-based, 5E mini-unit for New York City high school and community college Earth science students, most of whom identify as belonging to non-dominant groups. As well as supporting standard science skills such as graphing and interpreting data, we leveraged…

Promoting a functional scientific literacy entails preparing people to effectively engage and make decisions regarding real-world socioscientfic issues (SSI) through consideration of the relevant products and processes of science, as well as social, cultural, environmental, and ethical factors. Students can develop a functional scientific literacy…