As a discipline, educational psychology is somewhat idiosyncratic in terms of content and methodologies. Such idiosyncrasies are likely rooted in the philosophical history of the discipline which involves both the empirical tradition of Thorndike and the contextualized pragmatics of James and Dewey. Despite this, there is little teaching about…

With a primary objective to engage students in the process of science online, we transformed a long-standing laboratory course for first-year science students into a more accessible, immersive experience of current biological research using a narrow and focused set of primary literature and the Consider, Read, Elucidate a hypothesis, Analyze and…

This paper presents the results of a pilot SoTL study re: a non-traditional leadership course delivered in three sections of a foundational General Education course at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada in 2016-17. This non-traditional course focuses explicitly on ontological change (a change in way of being) rather than epistemological…

The knowledge content of university-level introductory sustainability courses elicits emotional reactions by students that are novel within the typical classroom context. Common negative reactions include 'sadness', 'worry', 'guilt' and 'disgust', while more positive responses include 'feeling angry', 'empowered', 'like trying to make a…

Our study is framed according to a transformational-sociocritical approach to an education for sustainable development (ESD) that, in particular, considers landscapes as learning contexts of potential use for fostering engagement in the areas of environmental protection and sustainable development. In keeping with this perspective, we surveyed…

The purpose of this article is to present the scale items, the statistical characteristics, and evidence of validity of the previously unpublished Beliefs about Learning and Teaching Questionnaire that examines elementary teachers' epistemological beliefs and their beliefs about learning and teaching in inclusive classrooms. In this study, 186…

This ongoing case study reports on the research activities of the Canadian Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education (ESE-TE) Standing Committee. A history of the Standing Committee's research activities, a literature review comparing the Standing Committee's ESE-TE research with international approaches to ESE-TE research,…

The purpose of the study was to examine undergraduate students' conceptions of inquiry and the relationship of inquiry conceptions to epistemic beliefs. Data were obtained from 107 university students (80 female, 27 male) using an open-ended questionnaire to examine their conceptions of inquiry and Schommer's Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire…

Work-integrated learning programmes help students acquire professional acumen and provide opportunities for them to experiment with new aspects of self and identity. Twelve internship students were interviewed regarding their perspectives on how they think they learn about professionalism and the information sources they use. They describe how…

Canadian university students tend to endorse employment-related reasons for attending university ahead of other reasons such as personal satisfaction or intellectual growth. In the present study, first- and fourth-year students from a mid-sized Canadian university reported on the benefits they expected to receive from their degree and rated their…

To prepare students for participation in a pluralistic, democratic society, history curriculum should help them develop mature ideas about why multiple accounts of the same events exist. But how can we know if we are successful? In this article, we describe work on the design, validation, and piloting of a paper-and-pencil instrument called the…

This paper considers the use of a simple assignment, the personal narrative, in teaching students the discursive issues involved in doing academic history. Focusing on autobiography, I present the results of a survey of Canadian university students into their experiences with writing personal histories. Specifically, the survey asked students to…

Many environmental educators and philosophers have identified anthropocentrism and the socially constructed separation between humans and "the more-than-human world" (Abram, 1996) as primary root causes of current ecological devastation. This separation is embedded in Western schooling content and structures and is often unintentionally…

Epistemic beliefs are deeply held convictions about the nature of knowledge, knowing, and learning. In this study, approximately 500 ninth and tenth-grade physical education (PE) students completed fitness-specific measures assessing their epistemic beliefs in the simplicity and stability of knowledge and the speed of its acquisition along with…

This paper posits that Inventing Games (IG), an aspect of the games curriculum based on principles of Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), opens up important spaces for teaching social and ethical understanding. Games have long been regarded as a site for moral development. For most teachers, however, ethical principles have been seen as…