We are pleased to announce the Summer 2012 issue of Science Education and Civic Engagement: An International Journal.
Vance High and James Rye at West Virginia University have contributed a research article titled “Engaging within Time Limits: An Integrated Approach for Elementary Science.” This article describes a creative approach to teaching inquiry-based environmental science in elementary school by linking it to children’s literature. Using this linkage strategy, the authors measured positive changes in the attitudes of pre-service elementary school teachers towards teaching science.
The four project reports in this issue present a diversity of topics, including quantitative reasoning, bacteriology, and ecology. A team of educators — Abour Cherif (DeVry University), Farahnaz Movahedzadeh (Harold Washington College), Linda Michel (DeVry University Online) and Nancy Marthakis (Purdue University North Central) — use interesting discoveries about our body’s bacterial neighbors to promote active learning in biology classes. Marina Dedlovskaya and Patricia Sokolski, both from LaGuardia Community College, explain the benefits of integrating a reflective component into a quantitative reasoning course, which included civic topics such as recycling and calculating a personal ecological footprint.
Mark Fink, M. Leigh Lunsford, Suzanne M. Donnelly, Melissa C. Rhoten, Kelsey N. Scheitlin, and Alix D. Dowling Fink, all at Longwood University in Virginia, use the Chesapeake Bay, North America’s largest estuary system, as a meaningful location for active learning and civic engagement.
Finally, David Green at Florida Gulf Coast University shows how integrating emerging technologies into two non-majors ecology courses can stimulate students’ creativity while providing valuable interactive resources for local communities.
We wish to express our gratitude to all the authors who have shared their interesting research and educational projects with the readers of this journal.
— Trace Jordan and Eliza Reilly, Co-Editors-in-Chief
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