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 to the cycling of matter between organisms, and between organisms and the abiotic environment in which they live, are presented and discussed. The design and methodology of the study were reported earlier (Leach et al. in press a) while a subsequent paper will discuss the children's ideas relating to other aspects of the interdependency of organisms in ecosystems (Leach et al. in press b).