It is essential that concepts surrounding species interactions and their importance for biodiversity conservation are widely taught and understood. Incorporating playfulness into ecological education initiatives can attract more interest in these aspects of ecology. Over the last three decades Pokémon has engaged with millions of people by…

The discovery of frog abnormalities by students on a school field trip in 1995 sparked hundreds of scientific studies in search of the cause of abnormality. This Socio-Scientific Issue has been used as an inquiry-based learning exercise for training in the practice of science, but it is also well-suited to teaching the nature of science. Our goal…

Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits people obtain from nature contributing to our well-being. Although this concept has high didactic potential, its presence in education literature is scarce. This article presents the ES framework as a new teaching principle that, taught together with the biodiversity concept, may help students develop…

Virtual field trips are transforming education in biology and other place-based disciplines -- and not just since COVID-19 has imposed social distancing constraints. Efficient methods for content creation, combined with affordable immersive technology, provide the opportunity to integrate immersive experiences into ever-larger classes. However,…

The article presents the results of an exploratory-qualitative study about children´s conceptions of ecology in relation to media messages. The objective of the study has been to identify the role of ecologism and environmental campaigns on ecology conceptions of 105 6th grade children, age 10-12, from an educational institution in Bogota,…

Education reform calls for portraying science as a process of inquiry and argumentation grounded in the epistemic traditions of a domain. While experimentation is a core scientific investigation strategy, diverse approaches are represented across different domains of science. Ecosystem scientists use experiments as a core part of their…

For conservation biologists to be effective, they need to be able to communicate to the general public. In today's world, communicating means tapping into social media platforms. To get our final-year undergraduate students to engage with using social media as a communication tool, we had each of them create a video, blog, or podcast about a…

The present study explored the impacts of a contextualised outdoor science curriculum on "what" and "how" elementary students learn when immersed in the local contexts in which natural phenomena occur. We conducted 63 individual interviews with fifth- and sixth-graders (between 10 and 12 years old) living in the inner city of…

This study aims to reduce the skills redundancy in ecology graduates by developing an employer-tailored work-"simulated" learning curriculum. Furthermore, we evaluate the overall potential of work-simulated learning (WSL) as a key pedagogic component of a work-"integrated" learning (WIL) framework. We employed the DACUM…

This study examines the development of the concept of the ecological niche among 10-11-year-old students and their ability to use this concept to give their opinions on the socially relevant and controversial possibility that wolf populations might be established in the mountains surrounding the school. A total of 21 elementary school students…

UNESCO has identified education for sustainable development (ESD) as a key factor in the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Education is important in developing awareness of how to preserve natural ecosystems and promote the uptake of renewable energy sources. Ecology education in primary school aims to give students a scientific…

The theory of evolution can be a useful basis for developing students' understanding of ecology. Our study used concept maps to examine the development of sixth-grade students' understanding of the Antarctic ecosystem following several evolution 'Science Days' conducted at 'Nature Campus' -- an informal learning environment comprised of a natural…

This high school-level, place-based, inquiry-driven laboratory module familiarises students with techniques used to analyse animal behaviour while facilitating the development of the observational skills highlighted by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Throughout the module, students observe, quantify, and discuss local invertebrate…

This study explores the progression in the perceptions that pre-service primary teachers have about the interdependence of people and invertebrate organisms, after implementing an inquiry proposal. By means of an inductive analysis, the reports made by the pre-service teachers were assessed and grouped into four models, according to the level of…

The lack of interest among pre-university students to choose STEM subjects for their higher education is a heavily debated issue in many western-world countries. To boost Danish students' interest in biology, a study event on artificial reefs was introduced when teaching marine biology in lower secondary school and upper secondary school (student…