Children's ideas about ecology 2: ideas found in children aged 5‐16 about the cycling of matter

This paper reports some of the findings from a study of the ecological understandings of children aged 5‐16 years in schools in the north of England. Children's ideas about selected ecological concepts were elicited through a series of written tasks and individual interviews set in a range of contexts, referred to here as probes. Responses of about 200 pupils, across the age range, were obtained on each probe. In this paper pupils’ ideas related...