Immersive environments hold promise to provide unique and heightened sensory experiences that focus a learner's attention, and thus may be useful learning platforms. In particular, portable planetariums may be useful in advancing conceptual knowledge about the night sky, because they afford learners with Earth-based views of celestial motions,…

Educating the public about wildlife and conservation has long been a core component of many zoos' mission statements (Patrick, Matthews, Ayers, & Tunnicliffe, 2007). However, research has demonstrated that most patrons visit zoos to be entertained and to socialize rather than to be educated. Thus, greater emphasis is now placed on encouraging…

This paper details the psychosocial changes in a group of gifted and talented middle-years students who engaged in solving a community-based problem--the lack of a teenage-safe space in their regional Queensland town ("N"). Supported by a Knowledge Producing Schools pedagogy, the young people worked with their local council, teachers, a…

The study aimed at examining the effect of the planetarium trip on metaphors developed by the pre-service science teachers about the concept of planetarium. Within this context of the study, a trip was organized to Ondokuz Mayis University (OMU) Planetarium. Pretest-posttest control group design, one of the experimental designs, was used in the…

Although Physical Education and Sports course has become a current issue with the discourses such as removal of the course from schools and reduction of the course hours, it is also considered as an important means in socialization, personality development and acquisition of physical and mental health. However, it is seen that studies where the…

The growth of kids' brain could be optimized by recognizing something. Learning to recognize animals is one of the methods to stimulate the children's brain growth to imagine. Nevertheless, kids tend to spend all their time by playing and could not focus to recognize the animals due to the way of learning which is usually not interactive and not…

In this forum we discuss three aspects designed to clarify and extend Kelly and Kassing's paper. These are the roles of improvable objects, contradiction and object/tool reciprocity. In each case we cite relevant literature and pose questions to the field. Our goal is to seed ideas for future discussions concerning the role of activity theory…

The development of basketball and athletics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reflected a greater movement of education reform, civic development, and gender in the United States. In the twentieth century, Progressive Era reformers sought to remedy the ills of society such as urbanization, industrialization, and the lack of…

Accommodating the planetarium experience to members of the deaf or hard-of-hearing community has often created situations that are either disruptive to the rest of the audience or provide an insufficient accommodation. To address this issue, we examined the use of head-mounted displays to deliver an American Sign Language "sound track"…

Research has demonstrated that conversations among museum, aquarium, and zoo visitors can be a clear indication of active learning, engagement, and participation in scientific reasoning. This descriptive study sought to determine the extent of talk about ecology-related topics exhibited by family groups visiting marine touch tanks at four Pacific…

The article focuses on how leisure-time teachers (LtT) in Sweden both confirm and resist the array of new demands related to leisure-time centres (LtC). The data consist of interviews with six LtTs. The results are interpreted as representing different parts of the LtT's professionalism and show that the LtTs through their tellings constructs…

There is increasing activity in the area of quality issues in education in Europe. Diverse discourses of policy for quality are encountered in daily practice. This article explores systematic quality development work in a Swedish educational setting: the leisure-time centre. By following 2 teachers' enactments of policy in planning, organising,…

Interventions in out-of-school settings have been shown in previous studies to effectively increase students' science knowledge and motivation, with mixed results on whether they are more effective than teaching at school. In this study, we compared an out-of-school setting in a reptile and amphibian zoo (Landau, Germany) with a sequence of…

This design-based research project examines three iterations of Tree Investigators, a learning environment designed to support science learning outdoors at an arboretum and nature center using mobile devices (iPads). Researchers coded videorecords and artifacts created by children and parents (n = 53) to understand how both social and…

The importance of nature-based play has gradually become forefront in an array of research fields. From the more obvious physical benefits to the complex mental benefits, nature has proved time and time again to be the cure-all for a variety of common ailments. Richard Louv, author of the famed "Last Child in the Woods," has spawned a…