Barbara Bajd

An Overview of Significant Influences and Formative Experiences on the Development of Adults’ Environmental Awareness in Nine Countries

Summary This article, like the preceding one in this special issue of the journal, examines the relative importance of various categories of influence and formative life experiences on the development of environmental educators’ knowledge of and concern for the environment. It provides an overview of data deriving from nine countries (Australia, Canada, Greece, Hong Kong, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Uganda, UK) and highlights global similarities and differences.

Significant Influences on the Development of Adults’ Environmental Awareness in the UK, Slovenia and Greece

Summary This article provides an overview and discussion of the relative importance of various categories of significant influences and formative life experiences on the development of environmental educators’ knowledge of and concern for the environment. A previous article in this journal (Palmer & Suggate, 1996) presents relevant findings deriving from the UK and analyses the ways in which the importance of influences may change through time or be affected by the subjects age. Here, the team of international authors presents data from three European countries and engages in both location‐specific and cross‐cultural comparative analysis.

Emerging knowledge of distant environments: An international study of four and six year olds in England, Slovenia and Greece

SUMMARY The research described here forms part of a major international research project entitled ‘Emergent Environmentalism’. This project aims to investigate the nature and origins of early ideas about the environment held by young people, the development of childrens environmental understanding and significant life experiences which influence the development of individuals environmental knowledge and concern. Findings discussed here derive from the three European countries of England, Slovenia and Greece and comprise the first published account of European cross-cultural data on knowledge of distant environments. The paper is concerned with young childrens developing awareness and understanding of two habitats, namely tropical forests, with the associated issue of deforestation, and polar lands, including the impact of global warming. Data help to explain aspects of the knowledge children have about these environments before they enter school, the development of this knowledge from ages four to six ...

Human Evolution and Education in Slovene Schools

This article discusses the importance and benefits of providing lower secondary school students with some knowledge of human evolution and its educational context. The author surveyed science teaching in secondary and upper secondary schools in Slovenia and concluded that evolution in general, and human evolution in particular, do not feature prominently in the curriculum and so are not represented by many teaching contact hours. Neither are popular, well-designed, and up-to-date books on the subject--whether by Slovene authors or in translation--readily available to interested students. And yet, paleoanthropology—the study of human evolution in its wider context—is a rapidly developing, high-profile branch of science with major popular appeal. Recent discoveries—many of them spectacular—have provided a much more detailed picture of human evolutionary history, significantly modifying earlier ideas about our ancestry. The subject not only attracts much public interest but also has major educational benefits: human evolution exemplifies many general evolutionary principles, illustrates the synergy of focused multidisciplinary approaches in the life sciences, and reinforces teaching of environmental conservation, human relations, and social responsibility. Because of the subject’s importance, the author provides some suggestions on how the teaching of human evolution might be incorporated into the school curriculum and considers some of the educational resources available to support its teaching.

Assessment of Grip Force Control in Healthy Children and Children with Down Syndrome

The aim of our study was to assess how the grip force control under visual feedback is affected in children with Down syndrome. We designed a tracking-based assessment system. The grip-measuring device developed was used as an input to a tracking task where the children applied the grip force according to the visual feedback from the computer screen. The evaluation was performed in a group of healthy 10 year-old children and a group of seven children with Down syndrome. In our investigation we used two different target signals: ramp to evaluate motor activity with a constant output rate and sinus to assess performance during periodic activity. The children performed the tasks using the lateral grip of their dominant hand. The results show that the healthy children were able to quickly understand the tracking task and performed all tasks with good accuracy. The children with Down syndrome required more time to adjust to the tasks. Based on the approach used during tracking, the children of the Down syndrome group were divided into two separate groups. The children of the first group were able to continuously track the target with somewhat consistent output. The remaining children were not able to understand the tracking task and they repeatedly applied and released the force instead of tracking the target. The results of our study suggest that training by the proposed tracking-based system could improve the performance in some of the children.