With growing social science interest in new materialist and posthuman ontologies, it is timely to explore how these may translate practically into social research methodologies. This task is complicated by differing interpretations of how new materialist precepts should shape research. This paper aims to fill a gap in the literature by setting out…

Similar to other fields, environmental education has begun to embrace the significance of nonhuman animals. This essay examines developments in the natural sciences, particularly in the field of cognitive ethology, that focus on the concept of empathy as a paradigm for conceptualizing human/nonhuman animal relationships. Drawing on my own…

The author considers the biological basis of the arts in human evolution, which she holds to be grounded in ethology and interpersonal neurobiology. In the arts, she argues, ordinary reality becomes extraordinary by attention-getting, emotionally salient devices that also appear in ritualized animal behaviors, many kinds of play, and the playful…

One of the innovations in the Slovenian school system has been the introduction of elective subjects in the curricula of primary and secondary schools, thus there is a lack of teaching manuals for practical exercises and hands-on classroom experience. This situation is reflected in the Ethology classroom and for that purpose we prepared…

Experiential learning provides students the time and space to participate in the process of learning by engaging in real, modern situations. Via hands on activities and reflection, students are able to assimilate new experiences with previous ones, and it has been repeatedly shown to improve student learning. We assessed how ten days of…

It seems that in the mind of the public, teachers have come to be defined by what they solicit (protection in the form of a union) and what they fail to elicit (passing scores for students on standardized tests) as opposed to what it is they do, which is teach. This misinterpretation may very well arise from the lack of clarity in defining the…

In the past decade, there has been a growing recognition that society's emphasis on speed and efficiency came with some costs: a loss of the ability to appreciate activities and understand their meanings. Recently, this meta-movement has made its way into the literature on literacy, causing the author to embark on an investigation into the…

In this survey of the research on psychological approaches to play, the author outlines its various focuses on the similarities and differences in the thinking and behavior of individuals and groups in relation to play and on the environmental factors that influence these. She notes that although psychologists often use standard experimental…

Understanding the process of attachment formation in young children has been a focal point in child development research for decades. However, young children's attachments are not only with human beings; they also form bonds with companion animals, particularly dogs ("Canis familiaris"). Given the number of dogs that are kept by families…

In order to design programs that are relevant to global audiences, it is essential for informal learning centers to work collaboratively and test programs in a variety of communities. In line with this, research was conducted on a recent collaborative educational effort between Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Illinois and the National Museum of Niger…

Charles Darwin made numerous seminal contributions to the study of animal behavior over his long career. This essay places these contributions in the context of Darwin's life, showing his long-standing interest in psychological and behavioral issues encompassing all species, including humans. Ten areas are highlighted: natural history;…

This article informs school improvement and educational change from a radically different perspective. Building upon work done recently in neural psychology, primatology and ethology, the article examines four common and general types of organisational form: the cell, the silo, the pyramidal, and the network types of organisational structures.…

Mill may be said either to have written rather little on education or to have written a very great deal. He himself distinguished between a "narrow" and a "wider" sense of education, the former limited to what happens in formal educational settings, the latter embracing all the influences that make us who and what we are. He wrote rather little on…

What would make anti-bullying initiatives more successful? This book offers a new approach to the problem of school bullying. The question of what constitutes a useful theory of bullying is considered and suggestions are made as to how priorities for future research might be identified. The integrated, systemic model of school bullying introduced…

In response to a direct request from science teachers, researchers initiated a pilot experience on animal orientation and navigation, which was delivered to 61 13-year-old students in Florence, Italy. The aim was to explain the approach to ethology and to link animal navigation with geography, focusing on species crossing the Italian territory.…