Engaging Students in Sustainable Science Education

This Special Issue (Engaging Students in Sustainable Science Education) compiled effective approaches to student engagement in science-related classes. Some articles were written by researchers in science education; however, the majority were prepared by college and university instructors based on their own instructional approaches, and were designed to help other practitioners improve student engagement in scientific contexts. Both types of contributors added value to this conversation. This Special Issue serves to unite science and education, identifying approaches that create stimulating scientific learning environments

Mobile Learning: location, collaboration and scaffolding inquiry

Critiques of mobile learning pedagogy are concerned with whether such approaches are technology led. This chapter discusses how the particular features of mobile learning can be harnessed to provide new learning opportunities in relation to collaboration, inquiry and location-based learning. Technology supported inquiry learning is a situation rich with possibilities for collaboration. In particular, mobile learning offers new possibilities for scaffolding collaboration together with its other better-known features such as scaffolding the transfer between settings and making learning relevant by making use of the possibilities of location-based learning. These features are considered as part of mobile learning models, in particular mobile collaborative learning models

The Use of ICT for the Assessment of Key Competences

This report assesses current trends in the area of ICT for learning and assessment in view of their value for supporting the assessment of Key Competences. Based on an extensive review of the literature, it provides an overview of current ICT-enabled assessment practices, with a particular focus on more recent developments that support the holistic assessment of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning in Europe. The report presents a number of relevant cases, discusses the potential of emerging technologies, and addresses innovation and policy issues for eAssessment. It considers both summative and formative assessment and considers how ICT can lever the potential of more innovative assessment formats, such as peer-assessment and portfolio assessment and how more recent technological developments, such as Learning Analytics, could, in the future, foster assessment for learning. Reflecting on the use of the different ICT tools and services for each of the eight different Key Competences for Lifelong Learning it derives policy options for further exploiting the potential of ICT for competence-based assessment.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

The Augmented Learner : The pivotal role of multimedia enhanced learning within a foresight-based learning model designed to accelerate the delivery of higher levels of learner creativity

The central theme for this dissertation lies at the intersection of multisensory technology enhanced learning, the field of foresight and transformative pedagogy and their role in helping to develop greater learner creativity. These skills will be key to meeting the needs of the projected growing role of the creative class within the emerging global workforce structure and the projected growth in R&D and the advancement of human-machine resource management. Over the past two decades, we have traversed from the Industrial Age through the Information Age into what we now call postnormal times, manifested partly in Industry 4.0. It is widely considered that the present education system in countries with developed economies is not optimised for delivering the much-needed creative skills, which are prominent amongst the critical 21st C skills required by the creative class, (also known as creatives), which will be increasingly dominant in terms of near future employability. Consequently, there will be a potential shortfall of creatives unless this issue is rapidly addressed. To ensure that the creative skills I aimed to enhance were relevant and aligned with emerging demands of the changing landscape, I deconstructed the critical dimensions, context, and concept of creativity in postnormal times as well as undertaking in-depth research on the potential future workscape and the future of education and learning, applying a comprehensive foresight approach to the latter using a 2030-2040 horizon. Based upon the outcomes of these studies I designed an experimental integrative learning system that I have applied, researched, and evolved over the past 4 years with over 150 students at PhD and master’s level. The system is aimed at generating higher levels of creative engagement and development through a focus on increased immersion and creativity-inducing approaches. The system, which I call the Living Learning System, is based upon eight integrated elements, supported by course development pillars aimed at optimizing learner future skill competencies and levels of creativity for which I apply severalevaluation techniques and metrics. Accordingly, as the central hypothesis of this dissertation, I argue that by integrating the critical elements of the Living Learning System, such as emerging multisensory technology enhanced learning coupled with optimised transformative and experiential learning approaches, framed within the field of foresight, with its futures focus and decentralised thinking approaches, students increase their ability to be creative. This increased ability is based on the student attaining a richer level of personal ambience through deeper immersion generated through higher incidence of self-direction, constructivism-based blended pedagogy, futures literacy, and a balance of decentralised and systems-based thinking, as well as cognitive and social platforms aimed at optimizing learner creative achievement. This dissertation demonstrates how the application of the combined elements of the Living Learning System, with its futures focus and its ensuing transdisciplinary curricula and courses, can provide a clear path towards significantly increased learner creativity. The findings of the quantitative, questionnaire-based research set out in detail in Chapter 9, together with the performance and creativity evaluation models applied against the selected case studies of student projects substantiate the validity of the hypothesis that the application of the Living Learning System with its futures focus leads to increased creativity in line with the needs of the postnormal era.publishedVersio

Makers at School, Educational Robotics and Innovative Learning Environments

This open access book contains observations, outlines, and analyses of educational robotics methodologies and activities, and developments in the field of educational robotics emerging from the findings presented at FabLearn Italy 2019, the international conference that brought together researchers, teachers, educators and practitioners to discuss the principles of Making and educational robotics in formal, non-formal and informal education. The editors’ analysis of these extended versions of papers presented at FabLearn Italy 2019 highlight the latest findings on learning models based on Making and educational robotics. The authors investigate how innovative educational tools and methodologies can support a novel, more effective and more inclusive learner-centered approach to education. The following key topics are the focus of discussion: Makerspaces and Fab Labs in schools, a maker approach to teaching and learning; laboratory teaching and the maker approach, models, methods and instruments; curricular and non-curricular robotics in formal, non-formal and informal education; social and assistive robotics in education; the effect of innovative spaces and learning environments on the innovation of teaching, good practices and pilot projects

The role and value of A-level geography fieldwork: a case study

Fieldwork has occupied a prominent position in UK geography teaching since the establishment of the discipline in the late nineteenth century, and remains a ubiquitous element of the geography curriculum for pre- and post- sixteen year-olds today. Utilising autobiography as a method of reconstruction and interpretation, the thesis explores the development of this central role for fieldwork and argues that, rather than arising from a legitimacy effected by a critical appraisal of fieldwork as a pedagogical device, fieldwork has developed pari passu in response to geography’s disciplinary shifts in philosophical and methodological orientation. As a result, varying conceptions of the purpose of fieldwork exist: as a parallel with practical 'laboratory' science in which theory is thought to be rendered more intelligible by the experience; as a means of teaching geographical enquiry skills; as a process of environmental engagement or immersion. The relationship between these educational objectives remains unclear, and a lack of educational research exists to clarify what is done on fieldwork, its intended educational function and effectiveness, and its place in contemporary geography. The study seeks to redress the balance by aiming to analyse the role and value of a residential fieldwork experience in geographical learning for advanced level geography students (i.e. students aged 16-19); to compare and contrast the respective assessments of the student and teacher of fieldwork’s purpose; and to explore frameworks and methods for evaluating the effectiveness of field instruction as a learning process. The research uses qualitative research strategies in a case-study to describe and analyse the holistic process of learning in action from the perspectives of its participants. Four themes are explored in depth: skills-based learning, affective learning, learning transfer, and geography fieldwork as environmental education. Results show that learning is affected by a tension of purpose between teaching for theoretical exemplification, technical competency and investigative skills, and environmental awareness. Stage-management in hypothesis-testing aimed at developing students' conceptual understanding is the predominant teaching method but despite this emphasis successful transfer of learning is low. The technical competency emphasis is propositioned as moving fieldwork towards utilisation of a technocentric ideology in addressing environmental issues in geography. This is regarded as devaluing an individual's environmental experience, personal commitment, and political obligation which are seen as important aspects of an environmental education. Fieldwork is seen to be most valuable in the affective domain: producing self- and subject-motivation through inter alia novelty of milieu, self-concept enhancement, productive role-modelling, and changing students' 'scripts' for learning. The links between these affective dimensions and fieldwork's role in students' cognitive development offer profitable avenues for further research