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The article discusses project-based learning of ecosystems, biodiversity and pollution in a vocational school in Bulgaria. The teaching strategy based on interactive methods, information communication technologies, out-of-school observations, experiments and Power Point presentations versus teaching strategy based on lectures and information communication technologies were comparatively studied and the results were analyzed. Difficulties met by students and strategies for overcoming them were dealt with and described. The ecological concerns of students were surveyed using revised New Ecological Paradigm scale. The theoretical framework was based on constructivism, theory of multimedia learning, zone of proximal development and guided discovery.

The article presents a diagnostic investigation of classroom self-assessment of 174 students in 8 th grade of elementary school (92 from Bulgaria and 82 from Turkey). A method of assessment and self-assessment on 40 environmental terms was used. The skill of students to make right decisions about their environmental knowledge was studied. The influence of the differential effect of social status and academic achievement level upon self-assessment was revealed. Comparative analysis of the results from Bulgaria and Turkey showed that most of the students did not reflect critically upon their knowledge and did not evaluate it against school achievement standards.

Analyzes the main positions and critiques of leading hypotheses about the biochemical origin of life as a result of new achievements in natural sciences and technologies. Compares their basic characteristics in respect to proposed geochemical conditions and argued consequences of biochemical processes. Gives description of the last common universal common ancestor of all living things – LUCA.