Eva Nyberg

Drawing attention to the ‘green side of life’

The notion of plant-blindness, the inability of humans to notice plants in their environment, has been much examined. Similarly, plant scientists have criticised the seemingly zoocentric focus of a biological education, which appears to neglect plants. Furthermore, there are stark contrasts between the active plant behaviours evidenced in current research journals and their seemingly lacklustre counterparts in school curricula. By utilising a body of relevant literature and drawing on empirical data sets, the authors consider the ways in which affective experiences, through personal encounters, observations and guided explorations, can enhance students’ attention to the ‘green side of life’.

Learning Study Guided by Variation Theory: Exemplified by Children Learning to Halve and Double Whole Numbers.

This study aims to describe how the learning study model can be used to improve lesson design and children’s learning outcomes by enabling them to perceive and define the critical aspects of the object of learning, guided by variation theory. Three lesson designs were used with three groups of children (A = 24, B = 13, C = 14) from two schools. The results of the first design were analyzed before the second lesson was designed and conducted in a new group, and the results of the second were analyzed before the third was designed. The patterns of variation were based on simultaneous discernment of a base amount and half or double that amount. This was made to prevent the children from understanding doubling as just copying the original amount without including the original amount in the total sum, giving the double of 4 is 4 instead of 8. The use of varied original amounts made the children separate the concepts double and half from the amount, to conceive them as relative, rather than constant, values. The results show increased learning outcomes in all groups; however, differences between pre- and posttest were significant only for Group B (p = .015).

Aesthetic Experiences Related to Living Plants: A Starting Point in Framing Humans’ Relationship with Nature?

This chapter highlights some theoretical and empirical research regarding aesthetic experiences in science teaching and learning, and the significance that these experiences might have for developing environmental ethics. The Deweyan perspective of experience and continuity (e.g. Dewey, 1938/1997) is used as a theoretical lens. Empirical data from educational situations illustrate the theoretical discussion. In these examples, teachers and student teachers are confronted by and given tools for the close study of plants—that is, when the teacher in educative situations explicitly makes the students observe and/or take care of plants.