ZATPAC: a model consortium evaluates teen programs

Engaging urban residents in greater proconservation behaviors is essential to mitigate the biodiversity crisis. To date, most behavior‐change campaigns have been based on a one‐size‐fits‐all “think‐care‐act” approach resulting in insufficient, sometimes counterproductive, conservation gains. In our study, we assess the “think‐care‐act” paradigm and also consider a range of cobenefits that may motivate different segments of urban populations to take greater conservation action for reasons other than biodiversity gains. We surveyed a representative sample of Auckland, New Zealand (n= 2,124) and four clusters emerged through clustering analysis. The first segment (Environmentally Active; 32%), exhibited the “think‐care‐act” paradigm. The second segment (Well Informed; 28%), was highly knowledgeable and concerned about conservation problems but exhibited lower conservation behaviors. The third segment (Active Outdoors; 19%) was actively engaged in outdoor activities, but exhibited low conservation knowledge, concern, and behaviors. The fourth segment (Socially Motivated; 21%), demonstrated high levels of conservation behaviors but lower knowledge and concern about conservation issues. We discuss potential ways to engage with each segment based on cobenefits and the need to move away from the traditional “think‐care‐act” paradigm and instead work with existing values systems and foster greater conservation behavior based on existing cobenefits.

People's behaviour towards the conservation of Australian wildlife is important, because people's actions are the main causative factor associated with the demise and future recovery of wildlife conservation. We investigated the type and prevalence of behaviour performed by NSW residents towards wildlife conservation, investigate participants’ willingness to perform conservation behaviours in the future, and identify the barriers preventing people from engaging in conservation action. New South Wales (NSW) residents (n=312) participated in an online questionnaire in a cross-sectional study. Overall, participants’ intention to engage, and rates of actual participation, in conservation behaviours was low. The latter was mostly due to lack of time, money, knowledge, and the impact of health and fitness levels. The knowledge gained from this study can be harnessed to inform future policy and management decisions, design interventions to change conservation behaviours, and provides a foundation for further enquiry into the ‘human dimensions of wildlife’. There remains a wildlife conservation ‘attitude-intention-action gap’, where we are limited with our knowledge on how to transform pro-conservation attitudes into conservation action, which warrants further research.

Although a growing number of research articles in recent years have treated the role of informal settings in science learning, the subject of the history of science in museums and its relationship to informal and non-formal education remains less well explored. The aim of this review is to assemble the studies of history of science in science museums and explore the opportunities for the further use of the history of science in science museum education practice. Α number of mainly interdisciplinary texts from the fields of science education, history of science, scientific museology and museum education are reviewed. The review shows that the study of the role of history of science in informal and non-formal science education is heterogeneous and fragmentary. It is necessary to raise new research questions and construct new lines of research to investigate the subject in a more systematic way.

Specific metrics for the status of US science education indicate that the country is losing its competitive edge on a global scale; among nations, the US ranks 22nd in density of broadband internet penetration and 72nd in density of mobile phone subscriptions, both of which are critical tools for science literacy and likely contribute to our international rank of 48th in quality of math and science education. Even worse, 69% of US public middle-school math students are taught by teachers without degrees or certificates in mathematics, and 93% of public middle-school teachers in physical sciences lack degrees in their subject (NAS 2010). All of these rankings represent indicators of global science leadership. In short, formal science education systems in the US lag behind those of many other countries, and our ability to train the next generation of scientists is at risk (Brewer and Smith 2010). In addition to shortfalls in public schools, US K–12 youth now watch at least 4 hours of television daily, and the average teenager spends a whopping 7.5 recreational hours daily in front of television and gaming screens (NAS 2010) – time that instead could be devoted to doing homework or experiencing the natural world through outdoor engagement. The formal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education metrics for US education are not keeping pace with those of other developed countries and are declining over time. Ecology education is experiencing one of the largest deficits: public schools have cut back on field trips and many K–12 students now experience nature virtually, rather than directly (Louv 2008; Lowman and Mourad 2010). Likewise, many undergraduate and graduate programs are eliminating their natural history programs, sometimes referred to as the "extinction of the ologies" (Lowman and Mourad 2010). In contrast, informal science education (ISE) is now providing a larger compensatory component of STEM education to students as well as to citizens and policy makers. Currently, US museums tally approximately 850 million visits annually, which is more than the attendance for all major league sporting events and theme parks combined (483 million in 2011; www.aam-us.org). Along with these visits, museums are also recording a burgeoning virtual visitorship, with an additional 524 million online visitors in 2006 alone, which has escalated during the past 5 years. In the US, there are over 17 000 museums, whose visitors range from several hundred for a rural museum with a local mission to >8 million annually for larger or national museums (www.aam-us.org); many of these ISE experiences bolster shortfalls in formal STEM education. Natural history museums, with their biodiversity collections and interpretive dioramas, serve as focal points to provide ISE about ecological concepts, including biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate change, and landscapes. In many cases, K–12 students become inspired by seeing, touching, and working with collections; and increasingly, virtual technologies and social media are becoming important drivers of science education concepts for youth outside of the formal classroom setting. Both undergraduate and graduate students can gain valuable training in science communication and outreach using the public floor of museums and other ISE platforms (Trautmann and Krasny 2006; Lowman and Mourad 2010). Given the declining competitiveness of US science education on a global scale, ISE has become an important pipeline for engaging the next generation of scientists and for contributing to otherwise declining ecological literacy. Of US adults surveyed nationally, <20% possess an "acceptable" level of scientific literacy and a majority have little knowledge of natural science, the process of research, or the results of contemporary scientific investigations, despite the importance of science to both human and ecological health (Field and Powell 2001; Miller 2004). Many ISE institutions are embracing the urgency of providing visitors with hands-on experiences to understand science and especially ecology; such efforts may translate to a healthy community through an understanding of fresh water, pollinators, clean air, agriculture, carbon sequestration, forest products, and myriad other ecosystem services. Educators often suggest "the best way to help the public understand the research process is to involve them directly through hands-on research" (Ucko 2004). Public Engagement with Science (PES) is a term used in ISE circles that emphasizes the growing importance of providing citizens with a better understanding of science as a driver of economics and health; ecology is often a conduit for science understanding, whereby museums foster a sense of wonder that leads to greater science literacy by getting kids "hooked" on science. But more analyses of PES in museum settings – including theoretically based assessments of activities – are sorely needed (Bonney et al. 2009). In my former home state of North Carolina, 39% of 8th graders report they "never or hardly ever" designed a science experiment, and another 29% report doing hands-on science activities only once or twice a month. Teaching methods that were traditional several decades ago – lectures, textbooks, recipes in laboratory sessions –continue to be the norm in science education despite national outcries calling for radical change (eg Brewer and Smith 2010). Soon, science teachers may face additional pressure to incorporate hands-on experiences into their courses. Like those of many other states, North Carolina's revised science standards call for inquiry-based learning experiences emphasizing the Next Generation Science standards. Historically restricted to museums as an outreach activity, ISE may infiltrate the public school classroom, so that "citizen-science" activities originating in museums can be virtually transmitted to classrooms for dynamic new science activities (eg Project GLOBE, Project BudBurst, and iNaturalist.org; see Trautmann et al. 2012; Zoellick et al. 2012; www.yourwildlife.org). Programs such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) have national mandates from Congress to implement citizen science (or some major and transformational capacity of ISE) to reach diverse stakeholders with data streams about North American ecosystems (Lowman et al. 2009). In addition, for states like North Carolina, with large numbers of practicing scientists, the mentoring of K–12 teachers by scientists has the potential to become another pathway for ISE (Lowman and Randle 2009). To keep North Carolina competitive in science (especially given the strength of Research Triangle Park, a huge driver of technology and jobs in the state), public–private partnerships funded a new wing of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences that opened in April 2012. Called the Nature Research Center, it proposed to expand citizen science (ie PES) to diverse stakeholders using four innovative platforms of ISE (Dickinson and Bonney 2012). Drawing upon ecology and especially biodiversity as major drivers (since the museum houses a collection of over three million specimens of organisms endemic to the southeastern US), several ecology-based citizen-science programs were launched with marked success. These programs serve as a case study for integrating real nature and virtual technologies, thereby raising the ecological literacy of museum visitors. Researchers from the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University initiated visitor evaluations to track the success of the different platforms of informal learning that include: (1) citizen-science programs in partnership with local scientists (eg the Belly-Button Biodiversity program [Hulcr et al. 2012] or the "wild life of our homes" project [www.yourwildlife.org]); (2) virtual theater to connect K–12 students directly to environmental scientists working both in laboratories and in the field; (3) public education labs (called iLabs) that illustrate natural science techniques of "how we know what we know" about ecology and natural sciences; and (4) glass-walled laboratories where scientists work in the public eye and answer questions from onlookers about the scientific process. Will ISE platforms succeed in bolstering STEM education for students and visitors? With its myriad educational programs for diverse audiences, the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) is proving the success of ISE. Located in San Francisco, CAS's ecoliteracy programs are rooted in science learning, but take the next step to reconnect learners to the natural world and equip them with tools to foster healthy communities through environmental action (eg http://spotlight.macfound.org/featured-stories/entry/elizabeth-babcock). For example, the Academy's Teacher Institute on Science and Sustainability engages 3rd- to 5th-grade teachers in a cohort-based, 2-year training program to incorporate sustainability action in their science teaching. Using simple metaphors that make the science accessible, CAS's ocean action programs (hosted near a 200 000-gallon live coral-reef exhibit on the museum floor) acquaint visitors with the causes and mechanisms of ocean acidification, and its impact on coral reefs. Conservation-oriented stories, as well as action steps designed for individuals and families to reduce carbon emissions, are directly woven into the program's message. In addition, CAS has one of the museum world's first glass-walled laboratories, where visitors can "meet a scientist" and children can interact with diverse scientists as role models (Figure 1). Such innovative attempts to strengthen ISE may ultimately inspire the next generation of ecologists. Moreover, expansion of "virtual-plus-real" natural history educational platforms into other ISE institutions – botanical gardens, zoos, parks, and even school playgrounds (eg www.schoolofants.org) – will foster exciting opportunities to improve ecoliteracy, not just for students but also for their parents, for regional policy makers, and for a diverse public who enjoy destinations that offer ecology education in an informal setting. An informal science education (ISE) laboratory at the California Academy of Sciences encourages students and the general public to pose questions to practicing scientists. This interaction also allows visitors to learn how natural history hypotheses are tested by the scientific method. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

Land degradation is influenced by natural and anthropogenic factors, due to human behavioral activities. Studies on land degradation often focus on biophysical aspects and processes. Farmers’ perceptions and knowledge about land degradation are often ignored by researchers. The conservation behavior of farmers towards critical land needs to be studied. The purpose of this study is to analyze the level of farmers’ perceptions of critical land, as well as its influence on conservation actions in Jatiyoso and Gempolan villages, Karanganyar. This research is a quantitative descriptive study using the primary data obtained from the results of a survey of 61 farmer respondents in Jatiyoso and Gempolan Villages, Karanganyar, which was then analyzed by a simple regression analysis. The results of observations on the level of achievement of the respondents regarding the farmers’ perceptions that the land they work on is critically vulnerable is 59%, and the level of achievement of the respondents regarding Conservation Action is 55%. The relationship between farmers’ perceptions of conservation actions can be explained that farmers’ perceptions have a real influence on conservation actions of 63.8%. Further research involving the variables of Learning Experience, Knowledge, and Sense of Responsibility, needs to be carried out to get a comprehensive of Farmer Conservation Behavior on critical land. The strategy to increase the role of farmers in land conservation is to build farmers’ perceptions of critical land so that they are more aware of the threats to critical land, through agricultural extension.

The aim of this research is to evaluate the effect of biomimicry approach on the learning-teaching process, based on the results of the studies on teaching practices on the biomimicry approach. The research was carried out by systematic review method. Depending on this method, the review protocol of scientific studies, which consists of four stages: planning, research, selection and synthesis, was employed. Within the scope of the research, the studies indexed in the Web of Science (WOS) database were searched with the keywords "biomimicry", "biomimicry in education", and then the relevant studies were selected by scanning TRDizin, Wiley, Scopus databases. Additionally, the relevant postgraduate studies were scanned through the National Dissertation Center and ProQuest databases and were included in the review. Within the scope of research themes, all the related studies in the fields of Educational Sciences, Social Sciences, Education, Psychology and Sociology were included in the review. During the selection phase, the contents were evaluated and the studies suitable for the research purpose were determined in line with the elimination criteria. In the synthesis phase, the selected studies were evaluated in terms of their theoretical basis, aims, methods, findings, and limitations. The total number of studies included in the systematic review was determined as 16. The results of the study provide a perspective on the current status of the biomimicry approach in the field of social sciences, how it is conceptually defined, and the effects of this approach on responding to needs in the field of education and learning characteristics.

There is increasing interest in the use of artificial intelligence technologies, which have become a transformative force in the field of education, in educational fields that include subject areas that support lifelong learning, such as science and chemistry education. In this study, a systematic review was conducted on the use and effects of artificial intelligence applications in science and chemistry education between 2014 and 2024. As a result of the systematic review, it was seen that there was an increase in studies between 2021 and 2024. It was seen that artificial intelligence applications are mostly carried out in the field of science education. ChatGPT and conversational robots are usually used. These tools mostly impact on learning outcomes related to the learning process and researchers mostly report risks/limitations related to ethical issues in the use of AI tools in education. These applications are seen to have effects such as contributing to the online learning process of students, facilitating learning, providing multi-modal (auditory) learning environments for science/chemistry laboratory courses, providing interdisciplinary learning experiences, and encouraging personalized learning. In the reviewed studies, researchers generally emphasize ethical challenges and limitations regarding gender and racial bias, hallucinations, copyright infringement, plagiarism and biased information production, issues related to accuracy and reliability, problems with technical infrastructure and language support, and the impact of these practices on human decision-making processes and writing skills. As a result, determining and presenting ethical issues regarding the use of artificial intelligence tools in science and chemistry education and increasing the awareness of students and teachers about the conscious use of these tools will be an important step.

형평성 관련 비형식 과학 학습 및 교육 연구 경향 탐색 : 네트워크 분석법의 다학제적 적용

An exploratory survey of a small suburban community near Los Angeles investigated the attitudes and values underlying acceptance of technological applications, examined the relationship of general attitudes toward technology to conservation attitudes and behavior during the energy crisis of 1973–1974, and contrasted college students with the surrounding community in their regard for technology and energy conservation. Two distinct dimensions of attitudes toward technology utility and affect–were defined and found to relate to belief in the reality of the energy crisis and preferred solutions, but not to reported conservation behavior. Moreover, in contrast to popular images, no strong antitechnology sentiment was found among the college sample

The action competence (AC) concept originated in the Research Centre for Environmental and Health Education at the Royal Danish School of Educational Studies in the early 1990s. The AC concept is formulated as a Bildung (political and democratic formation) perspective on the purpose of education, focusing on what it means to be educated. The twinning of AC as an overall perspective on the purpose of education—a “democratic curriculum perspective,” with a concept of competence, as well as the pliability of the latter, where components can be added or removed—would seem to partly explain why AC has proved to be a useful concept in a range of cultural contexts and educational fields. Rooted in the tradition of participatory and democratic education, it has played a central role in the related fields of environmental, health, and sustainability education. These have traditionally been viewed as different fields of education but work toward the UN’s Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development has led to a recent development of literature with a potential to bridge these fields. While environmental educators concentrate on providing educational activities that foster learning about challenges to the flourishing of communities of life on Earth, health educators focus on learning experiences designed to facilitate voluntary actions conducive to health. The sustainability term addresses environmental, economic, and social dimensions in education, drawing attention to issues of inequality, social justice, and good health and well-being across the globe (see Oxford Bibliographies article on Education for Sustainable Development). Thus, sustainability connects to different fields of education, including environmental education, education for sustainable development, peace education, development education, citizenship education, and health and well-being education. Based on the continuous and widespread use of the AC concept in the related research fields of environmental, health, and sustainability education over the last three decades, it seems fair to point out that it contains a general critical potential in relation to such boundary crossing. The General Overviews section will provide insight into the origin, uptake, and development of the AC concept in literature and practice, whereafter a section on conceptualizations of AC follows. The next four sections describe how AC has been understood and used over time while the concluding section addresses three main tensions in the AC concept.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the state of informal science education and environmental education in a developing country, Indonesia, and to compare opportunities for informal science education in Bengkulu Province, Sumatra, Indonesia with opportunities for informal science education in North Carolina (NC), United States of America (USA, US). We describe informal science education as well as provide information about environmental education and formal science education in both countries. The chapter includes an overview of pressing environmental issues in each locale. We conclude the chapter with suggestions about how to develop and enhance informal science education opportunities in Bengkulu and in NC. Natural resource conservation education for children and adults, either through formal or informal education, is not well developed in Bengkulu. Formal science education opportunities have not utilized the natural surroundings as a source of learning; therefore, most students are unfamiliar with their natural environment. Additionally, opportunities for direct natural experiences through extracurricular activities are limited. Informal nature groups, which are common in the USA and Europe, such as boy and girl scouts, birding groups and junior park ranger opportunities, are not generally available in Bengkulu. While the Indonesian government has embraced the concept of ‘teaching green,’ this has not yet become best practice, especially in Bengkulu where this concept is still unfamiliar to most teachers and students. Generally in Indonesia, there is more focus on creating new markets in industrialized countries for raw products from Indonesia, and few people are attending to concerns about the diminishing natural resources in the Province. Informal science education could rally the Indonesian people to take appropriate action before their natural resources are depleted or severely impacted.

Research suggests that encouraging motivated residents to reach out to others in their social network is an effective strategy for increasing the scale and speed of conservation action adoption. However, little is known about how to effectively encourage large numbers of residents to reach out to others about conservation causes. We examined the influence of normative and efficacy‐based messaging at motivating residents to engage in and to encourage others to participate in native plant gardening in their community. To do so, we conducted a field experiment with messages on mailings and tracked native plant vouchers used. Efficacy messages tended to be more effective than normative messages at increasing residents’ willingness to reach out to others to encourage conservation action, as indicated by a several percentage point increase in native plant voucher use by residents’ friends and neighbors. Messages sometimes had different impacts on residents based on past behaviors and perceptions related to native plant gardening. Among these subgroups, efficacy and combined efficacy and norm messages most effectively encouraged individual and collective actions, as indicated by increased voucher usage. Our findings suggest that interventions that build residents’ efficacy for engaging in a conservation behavior and for reaching out to others may be a promising path forward for outreach. However, given our results were significant at a false discovery rate cutoff of 0.25 but not 0.05, more experimental trials are needed to determine the robustness of these trends.

text: This afterword provides a culminating reflection on the preceding chapters in this volume. I provide a response to the chapters individually as well as to the book as a whole, by considering the possibilities for 'troubling' the field of science education and imagining the potentials for transformation. In doing so, I use selected writings from Maxine Greene to underscore the potentialities that can emerge when we ‘release the imagination’ as she has called for and consider the possibilities for alternative approaches within science education research and practice.

This text starts with the inadequacy of the dispossession theory for the analysis of the relationship between publishing capital and academic labor; it is necessary to develop a Marxian theory of productive and unproductive labor within the field of science and higher education. For this purpose, a post-operaist perspective on productive labor has been proposed, which makes it possible to analyse the phenomenon of contemporary subsumption of academic labor under capital, as well as resistance against it. The essence of this approach is rooted in an exposition of the dual perspective on Marxist categories of the critique of political economy. It is used here to approximate the concept of directly productive academic labor, as well as to point out its apparent limitations. The next step is to present a view on the systemic productivity of academic labor. This is the only way to address the issue of truly productive academic work in the Marxian sense, and the obstacles on the way to its full implementation, the key to which is the smooth functioning of capitalist measures within the field of science and higher education.

À medida que pesquisadores anunciam uma difusão do pensamento de Michel Foucault na educação, também demonstram uma preocupação com os usos desse referencial. Nesse sentido, nos interessa saber como a educação em ciências e matemática, área do conhecimento que tangencia a educação, repercute as ideias do autor. Este trabalho teve como objetivo mapear as pesquisas em educação em ciências e matemática que desenvolvem os conceitos de Michel Foucault e descrever como o trabalho do autor tem sido utilizado na área. Para isso, nos concentramos nos periódicos da área de Ensino, classificados nos estratos A1 e A2, de acordo com o sistema Qualis-CAPES. Selecionamos 26 revistas que tinham como foco a educação em ciências e matemática (n=17) ou a educação de forma mais abrangente (n=9). Buscamos, nos volumes publicados entre 1990 e 2016, todos os artigos que citaram ao menos uma vez uma obra de Michel Foucault e classificamos os textos de acordo com a sua aproximação da obra foucaultiana, em três diferentes abordagens: apropriação incidental, conceitual tópica ou do modo de trabalho. A análise foi realizada em dois momentos: um em que efetuamos um sobrevoo nos dados dos 238 artigos que fizeram uma apropriação do modo de trabalho foucaultiano e outro em que selecionamos 18 textos específicos da área, por meio de palavras-chave relacionadas ao ensino de ciências e matemática, para investigar com maior profundidade os usos desse referencial pelos pesquisadores da área. Sustentamos que há uma difusão de pesquisas na área que operam o modo de trabalho foucaultiano, sobretudo a partir dos anos 2000. A apropriação teórica e metodológica de Foucault encontrada nos artigos se aproxima mais dos procedimentos da análise do discurso, todavia percebemos uma restrição no uso das fontes empíricas. Os autores utilizam o pensamento foucaultiano, em grande parte, como uma ferramenta metodológica e para realizar críticas de segunda ordem, investindo sobre as ideais e práticas já consolidadas na área.