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…

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…

We studied the initial conceptions of 73 pre-service primary teachers regarding the concept of ecosystem and examined how their understanding evolved as a result of participation in an inquiry-based learning exercise. The inquiry process involved identifying students' initial conceptions, making them aware of these, comparison of their ideas with…

In this paper, the authors analyse the conceptual contents related to plant nutrition in the widely-used school texts of six Spanish publishers. An analysis dossier was elaborated based on the epistemological and pedagogical study of this subject. The publishers deal with the issue of plant nutrition at three different levels (multicellular,…

In this paper we present a simple set-up that illustrates the mechanism of sap ascent in plants and demonstrates that it can easily draw water up to heights of a few meters. The set-up consists of a tube with the lower end submerged in water and the upper one connected to a filter supported by a standard filter-holder. The evaporation of water…