"In this study the purposes of the school activity program in the field of administration and supervision have been examined. These purposes, as they relate to the total school program, have been examined also. As a result of the careful examination of the purposes of the school activity program it is the purpose of this study to set forth a practical criteria for administering and supervising a school activity program"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1952." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: H. W. Dean, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 41-43).

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The majority of research in environmental education (EE) has focused on measuring knowledge, attitudes, and behavior using quantitative tools and methods. Few studies have attempted to elicit and characterize children's conceptions of the environment or nature, particularly those resulting from a residential EE experience, which contextualize knowledge, attitudes, and may be used to predict behaviors. Therefore little is known about how physical, socio-cultural, and personal dimensions are reflected in conceptual learning in the context of a guided outdoor program. This study begins to address this relative knowledge void by employing qualitative and phenomenological methods in a grounded theory approach. Interviews, writings and drawings on the topic of nature were collected from 5th grade students before and after a three-day residential outdoor school program conducted on the Oregon coast. Students' responses were analyzed in terms of breadth and depth of their nature conceptions. Individual students' additions to the emergent categories of breadth, including new organisms, habitats, processes, and non-living things, were used to measure change in the breadth of students' nature concepts. Change in depth of students' nature concepts was measured by means of emergent hierarchical typologies representing ideas included in students' understanding of nature. Factors affecting students' learning, including the themes students use to frame their interpretations of nature, emergent misconceptions, references to TV and books, students' interest, and weather, are discussed in terms of their impact on the breadth and depth of students' nature conceptions. Findings indicate almost universal gains in breadth and modest gains in depth of students' nature concepts. Children's preconceived ideas about nature, particularly an idealized view in which nature is seen as the opposite of human environments, appear to play an important role in learning. / Graduation date: 2006

An intervention, which targeted three- and four-year-old children's oral language, was developed for this study. The intervention was run over twice-weekly sessions, for ten weeks. Incorporating good Early Years practice, the first session in the week was a group shared storybook reading session with a puppet, where dialogic discussion took place and the children practised sequencing the story using visual prompts. The second weekly session consisted of planning, acting out and reviewing a planned pretend play episode based on the storybook which was read in that week's first session. Ninety-four children were randomly assigned to a control or treatment group and were tested at pre- and post-test on a battery of vocabulary and narrative assessments. The results of a Randomised Control Trial were positive in favour of the intervention. The most important of these results was a statistically significant effect on the receptive vocabulary of the children in the treatment group, with a large effect size, as measured by the standardised British Picture Vocabulary Scales (Dunn et al., 1997). There was also a significant effect on productive vocabulary, as measured by a Researcher-Designed Vocabulary Test (RDVT). This test was devised for the purpose of this study, testing one-word vocabulary, taken directly from the storybooks in the intervention. As this is not a norm-referenced, standardised test, caution is advisable in the interpretation of this result. A further positive effect concerned the narrative skills of the children in the treatment group, when compared to the children in a control group - the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) score was higher in the treatment group, with a medium effect size. By examining the intervention by Randomised Control Trial, this study responds to the call from Lillard et al (2013) for more experimental research on pretend play and narrative. The acknowledgement of the role of the adult in the intervention coupled with the positive effect on the children's MLU and receptive vocabulary mean that the intervention, with further development, has the potential to be used as a Professional Development tool for supporting language development in the Early Years in the UK, in the future.

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This project explores and justifies using the local environment as an effective educational strategy for teachers of special education students.

by Chan Yung. / Bibliography: leaves 53-58 / Thesis (M.A.Ed.) -- Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1983

Children today are disconnected from the natural environment around them, sometimes finding it annoying, lacking in excitement, and little use to them. Their attention and focus are spent inside watching TV, playing games on computers or a variety of other electronic devices. The purpose of this project was to see if after-school exposure to an Enirovnmental Science Club on the school grounds can impact student attitudes toward our local environment and to increase these third and fourth grade students' knowledge and awareness of their environment.