W1 – Week 1 Reading
As I foray a little deeper into brain-based learning, and multiple intelligences theories, which both have some basis in my Action Research project of getting younger students engaged and interested in environmental education through the reading of my e-book, and interactive website, several articles and reports have caught my eye in our library databases. I will briefly discuss five of them on this blog post.
The first article is an interesting report about 5th and 6th grade students in Cyprus being tested about their problem-solving, and decision-making skills by giving them a system thinking skills experiment revolving around a marsh ecosystem. This is very relevant to what I would like my book to help foster in children, especially with interest to wildlife and the natural environment. It was interesting to read about this study, and how it showed strong positive results toward the children being able to understand complex systems, and basically how the whole functions successfully based on the presence and function of its parts. The study results showed that elementary school children were indeed able to develop the potential for system thinking skills. I am still reading this fascinating article, so I will definitely have a lot more of a factual discussion about it for my literature review shortly. A screen shot of the article title is below:
The second article I am reading gives the results of a survey about student’s environmental attitudes and knowledge, at elementary schools in Turkey. I found this article to be fascinating in that after surveying 18 randomly selected elementary schools in Ankara, Turkey’s capital city, the findings indicated that elementary school children’s knowledge of environmental studies was low, but their attitudes about the environment were positive and favorable. The study also showed that female students’ attitudes were significantly more positive than male students, and also showed that the environmental knowledge level of the children’s fathers also made a difference. This is a good study for me to read about because I am interested in finding out about elementary school children’s knowledge about their natural environment. This article will definitely be a helpful piece in my literature review. Screen shot of the article title is below:
The third article in my cadre of information that I’m currently studying is a fascinating piece of research that was conducted in Taiwan on whether using technology, in this case web-based or e-learning, in elementary school classrooms was more effective than traditional instruction. In this case, the study results did show that indeed the e-learning was more effective than the traditional instruction. This is of importance to me, because I have created an e-book with a companion website for elementary school aged children, and it is very good to read about studies where it is shown that students do well, or prefer the e-learning to traditional reading instruction. A screen shot of the article title page is below:
The fourth article I am reading is absolutely fascinating. A study (named Project Zero) was conducted by Harvard University about whether or not elementary school children could grasp deeper concepts of underlying causal structures of ecosystems. The study states that students have difficulty understanding ecosystem concepts because they do not understand the underlying causality that structures the concepts. This study included three different test groups where the teacher taught different ecosystem activities. The students who participated in the infused activities lessons showed significantly deeper understanding of the connectedness within ecosystems than those students who did not participate in the ecosystem activities lessons. This further confirms my thoughts that elementary school aged children need more priming and instruction in environmental education. A screen shot of the title of this article is below:
The fifth article I am currently reading is very relevant to my area of study regarding environmental education (EE). Joe Heimlich has written a marvelous paper about better understanding the needs of environmental education related to technology! This paper explores web-using teachers and their levels of comfort with it when comes to searching for environmental education lessons for their students. I think this article will be of great use for me and be a great addition to my literature review. I want to get all teachers out there using the Internet to find rich resources to help them teach students about the natural environment. A screen shot of the article title is below:
Zoe, I like the way you used the screen shots to illustrate the articles you've been reading. They all sound like perfect sources for your AR project. I thought it was interesting that you had articles from Cyprus, Turkey, and Taiwan among your 5. These countries really seem to be exploring MLT and brain-based approaches to learning if the number of articles which pop up from universities in those places is any indication. (Remember, my posts will say Trisha instead of Pat because I've had a Google account for a couple of years now).
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