To show students how engineering design practices reduce the impacts of a natural hazard, the authors--two science educators and an elementary teacher--taught a three-day 5E lesson that focused on hurricanes. They specifically focused on hurricanes because their students are located near a coastal area and are familiar with the effects of this…

The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 defines major management challenges as programs or management functions that are vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, and where a failure to perform well could seriously affect the ability of the U.S. Department of Education (Department) to achieve its mission or…

To ascertain novice conceptions of tornado wind speed and the influence of surface characteristics on tornado occurrence, 613 undergraduate students enrolled in introductory science courses at a large state university in Nebraska were surveyed. Our findings show that students lack understanding of the fundamental concepts that (1) tornadoes are…

Background: Families exposed to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are at risk for numerous adverse outcomes. While previous literature suggests that the degree of disaster exposure corresponds with experiencing negative outcomes, it is unclear if parents and children report similar levels of disaster exposure. Objective: The purpose of this…

Evaluation is an important aspect of science and is receiving increasing attention in science education. The present study investigated (1) changes to plausibility judgments and knowledge as a result of a series of instructional scaffolds, called model-evidence link activities, that facilitated evaluation of scientific and alternative models in…

Following the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans public schools underwent a variety of changes including a mass influx of charter schools as well as a demographic shift in the racial composition of the district. Using school-level data from the Louisiana Department of Education, this study examines the extent that New Orleans public schools…

After nearly 2 decades of advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) including social media, mobile, analytics, and cloud computing, disaster response agencies in the United States have not been able to improve alignment between ICT-based information and disaster response actions. This grounded theory study explored emergency…

The disruption of education services during major crises poses a challenge for international agencies, governments, schools, and communities. The article demonstrates a potential role for mobile technologies in supporting continuity of education delivery during temporary school closures caused by such crises. Discussing how school administrators…

This paper uses a standard difference-in-differences approach to examine the effect of the L'Aquila earthquake on the academic performance of the students of the local university. The empirical results indicate that this natural disaster reduced students' probability of graduating on-time and slightly increased students' probability of dropping…

The authors compare the experiences of faculty and students at universities in Nepal and New Zealand following earthquakes in 2015 and 2011, respectively. Questionnaire data from students at Kathmandu University are analyzed and compared with previously published data from the University of Canterbury. Prominent themes are developed within the…

In the midst of a crisis like the climate crisis and calls for "all hands on deck", what do academics, as a microcosm of humanity, see? In Hannah Arendt's terms, an "abyss of freedom" to act or a paralysing "abyss of nothingness"? Some from the academy themselves, including Tamboukou, Apple and Bourdieu, make…

In countries recovering from disaster or conflict, school curriculum renewal is submerged in a plethora of more immediate concerns of a nascent government. Yet, curriculum is the cornerstone of any education system. Using a case study for context, this paper describes a methodology to maximise the quality of the emergent national curriculum. In…

In this address, I ask: What do we bring as anthropologists and educators to our work? Two projects frame my arguments: my work with teachers in Aceh, Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami and my term on a school board in an impoverished U.S. city. I conclude that at a time when challenges are simultaneously local and global, immediate and long term,…

"Disaster education" is a fledgling area of study in lifelong education. Many countries educate their populations for disasters, to mitigate potential damage and loss of life, as well as contribute to national security. In this paper, which draws on interview data from the German Federal Office for Civil Defence and Disaster Assistance…

Japan stands as a rare country in which ESD has been incorporated as mainstream policy. However, looking back on the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD), ESD has not brought about the transformation in Japan that one expects ESD to aim for, despite this support at the policy level. The cause may be that pouring…