Tali Tal

Sadler: This chapter raises several interesting issues associated with the assessment of argumentation. There is obviously a great deal of support throughout the science education community for featuring argumentation as a fundamental scientific practice that ought to be featured in science learning experiences. However, the tools available for assessing argumentation both for research and teaching purposes remain somewhat limited. Toulmin has had an enormous impact on how science educators think about argumentation and ...

ABSTRACT Sadler: To begin this chapter, the authors discuss the socio-scientific issues (SSI) movement in terms of related approaches to the contextualization of science education in issues that matter to students, teachers, and the broader population. They highlight relationships between SSI and the Science-Technology-Society (STS) movement and discuss different ways in which the movements overlap and share consistency: “The essence of all these ideas [SSI, STS, and other approaches that promote progressive visions of scientific literacy] is that the science content should be situated in real, important and often—controversial issues that gain the public’s interest” (p. 1). Later in the introduction, the authors extend the links between STS and SSI to include Education for Sustainability and Environmental Education. Historically, many of the issues addressed in Environmental Education (EE) are also issues featured within STS and SSI approaches. For instance, issues related to water pollution and quality fit easily into curricula labeled as EE or SSI. However, I see the purpose of a SSI-oriented curriculum and an EE-oriented curriculum as being significantly different. An SSI approach supports the development of individual learners and emergent communities of learners in terms of decision-making, participation in democratic processes, and reasoning. The focus is on student development and not on the promotion of a particular point of view or orientation. An EE approach may support similar processes but does so toward a desired result, that is, proenvironment attitudes and behaviors.

ABSTRACT The main goal of this study was to examine the Environmental Workshop unit taught to Environmental Sciences majors in the high schools in Israel and learn if, and in what ways, this unit could become a model for environmental education throughout the high school curriculum. We studied the special characteristics of the Environmental Workshop (EW) unit, which is based on inquiry-based learning that takes place in and out of school, and includes an environmental action component as well. We describe three approaches to the EW we identified. After identifying teachers’ challenges in assessing their students, in addition to the phenomenographic study, we suggest and demonstrate assessing the EW students by relevant socio-scientific issues. Finally, we argue that the EW could be incorporated in the junior as well as the high school curriculum as a coherent unit that is in line with environmental education in its broader sense.

In many cases the success of course websites is measured in terms of student satisfaction (Lim & Karol, 2002; Reister, Lapointe, & Korcuska, 2007; Sahin & Shelley, 2008; Smart & Cappel, 2006). Many studies rely on the assumption that satisfaction enhances the motivation for learning, and that as a consequence, students' ownership of the learning process increases (Lim & Karol, 2002; Smart & Cappel, 2006), which eventually, improves the effectiveness of the learning process. This research reports on the first stage of an ...

In recent years there is a growing concern regarding the quality of learning in undergraduate level education. In this study we synthesize various views about the notion of “learning culture” into one generic framework in which we describe a continuum ranging from learning driven by external values (eg, passing a test) to internal values (eg, the urge to learn). We use this framework to explore the effect of an intervention in three levels, which utilizes technology to gradually employ higher levels of internal values of teaching in a ...

This study concerns the characterisation and classification of the way junior high school science teachers incorporate Web-based learning environment and materials into their teaching. About 60 science teachers from nine junior high schools in the northern part of Israel took part in an extended professional development (PD) program. The study, which applied the qualitative interpretative methodology, involved multiple sources of

... understanding, question posing and critical thinking abilities, as well as their motivation. Case studies that involve ethics and values engage students in higher order thinking processes more than just focusing on a specific subject matter. ...