Learning Progressions for Environmental Science LiteracyPresentation to the Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards Committee Meeting

Written by: Charles W. AndersonCulturally relevant ecology, learning progressions and environmental literacy

Long Term Ecological Research Math Science PartnershipMarch 2010

Disclaimer: This research is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation: Targeted Partnership: Culturally relevant ecology, learning progressions and environmental literacy (NSF-0832173). Any opinions, findings,

and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Charles W. (Andy) Anderson

Presentation to the Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards, Committee Meeting 2

National Research Council

Board on Science Education

March 4, 2010

Learning Progressions for Environmental Science Literacy

Thanks for the Opportunity to Do This Research

This research is supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation: Developing a Research-based Learning Progression for the Role of Carbon in Environmental Systems (REC 0529636), the Center for Curriculum Materials in Science (ESI-0227557), Learning Progression on Carbon-Transforming Processes in Socio-Ecological Systems (NSF 0815993), and Targeted Partnership: Culturally Relevant Ecology, Learning Progressions and Environmental Literacy (NSF-0832173). Additional support comes from the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the United States Department of Energy.

Questions to Address

1) How did you identify your big ideas? That is, how did you decide what ideas to focus on?

2) How are you treating the relationship between content and practice?

3) What are the implications of learning progressions for writing standards?

Question 1

How did you identify your big ideas? That is, how did you decide what ideas to focus on?•We need standards that are compact, coherent, and incomplete•We need to focus on social utility: Preparing all students for roles as citizens•Environmental science literacy as my focus

Defining Environmental Science Literacy

• The required science curriculum should prepare students for roles that all citizens play– Private roles: learner, consumer, worker– Public roles: voter, advocate

• Key characteristics of informed citizenship– Ability to choose actions consistent with our values– Ability to understand and evaluate arguments from

evidence• We are developing learning progressions in three

strands– Carbon (main focus for today)– Water– Biodiversity

Question 2

How are you treating the relationship between content and practice?

• Content: Students need to be able to “see themselves in the loop diagram.”

• Practices of environmental science literacy: investigating, accounts, and deciding

• Using observations, patterns, and models to connect content and practice

Goal or Upper Anchor for Content: The Carbon “Loop Diagram”

Carbon-transforming processes “loop diagram” (Mohan, et al., 2009)

Practices of Environmentally Literate Citizens

Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of knowledge

Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of knowledge

Explaining and Predicting (Accounts)

What is happening in this situation?

What are the likely consequences of different

courses of action?

Explaining and Predicting (Accounts)

What is happening in this situation?

What are the likely consequences of different

courses of action?

Investigating (Inquiry)What is the problem?

Who do I trust? What’s the evidence?

Investigating (Inquiry)What is the problem?

Who do I trust? What’s the evidence?

Deciding

What will I do?

Deciding

What will I do?

Connecting Knowledge and Practice

Inquiry: Learning from data

Inquiry: Learning from data

Accounts: Using

models

Accounts: Using

models

Three Points about Content and Practice

• There is substantial overlap between our practices of environmental science literacy and other lists of practices:– Strands of scientific proficiency in Taking Science to

School– Scientific practices in 2009 NAEP Framework

• The key practices of accounts (explaining and predicting) and inquiry are inseparable from content knowledge and from one another

• Distinctions among types of knowledge claims—observations, patterns, and models—are essential for defining practices

Question 3

What are the implications of learning progressions for writing standards?•Implications of the general nature of learning progressions

– Conceptual and empirical validation– Telling a developmental story of learning

•Findings of our research: Key transitions that students need to make

– Discourse: Force-dynamic to scientific – Accounts: Explaining and predicting socio-ecological

processes at multiple scales– Inquiry: Standards for first-hand and second-hand

inquiry

Empirical Validation of Learning Progressions: An Iterative Process

• Framework and assessments are developed concurrently– Develop initial framework– Develop assessments (e.g. written tests,

interviews) and/or teaching experiments based on the framework

– Use data from assessments and teaching experiments to revise framework

– Develop new assessments…. • Key question for you: When is this process

“finished enough?”• We feel pretty confident about carbon, less

so about water and biodiversity

Another General Point: Different “Stories” of Learning

• Traditional standards: Accumulation of knowledge– Standards at all levels are scientifically correct

facts and skills– Students make progress by learning more facts

and more complicated skills • Learning progressions: Succession in

“conceptual ecologies”– Interconnected and mutually supporting ideas

and practices at all levels– Non-canonical ideas and practices can be both

useful and important developmental steps– Focus is on sequence of learning rather than age

of students

Findings from Our Research: Discourse, Accounts, and Inquiry

• Based on work with fourth grade through college students• Applicable more generally than just to carbon cycle

Findings about Learning Scientific Discourse

• Force-dynamic to scientific discourse: learning a fundamentally different way to interpret events in the material world

• Conceptual transition: from fungible “forces” to enduring entities

• Epistemological transition: from facts about the world to observations, patterns, and models

Contrasts between Force-dynamic and Scientific Discourse

• Force-dynamic discourse: Actors (e.g., animals, plants, machines) make thing happen with the help of enablers (“needs”) by exerting “forces”– Distinctions among types of enablers and forces are

fluid– Actors endure over time, but not the enablers and

forces• Scientific discourse: Systems are composed of

enduring entities (e.g., matter, energy) which change according to laws or principles (e.g., conservation laws)– Clear distinctions among entities– Entities endure over time while systems change

Findings about Accounts: Learning about Matter, Energy, and Scale

• Level 1: Explanations and predictions are based on ideas about actors and enablers at macroscopic scale

• Levels 2 and 3:– Current: students learn disconnected facts about

systems at smaller (microscopic, atomic molecular) and larger (landscape, global) scales

– Preferred: students expand awareness to smaller and larger scales in principled ways (focus of our teaching experiments)

• Level 4: Connected accounts across scales

Macroscopic Scale: Grouping and Explaining Carbon-transforming Processes

Carbon-transforming process

Generating organic carbon

Transforming organic carbon Oxidizing organic carbon

Scientific account

Photosynthesis Biosynthesis Digestion Biosynthesis Cellular respiration Combustion

Linking process

Plant growth Animal growth Breathing, exercise

Decay Burning

Informal account

Natural processes in plants and animals, enabled by food, water, sunlight, and/or air

Natural process in dead things

Flame consuming fuel

Black: Linking processes that students at all levels can tell us aboutRed: Lower anchor accounts based on informal discourseGreen: Upper anchor accounts based on scientific models

Atomic Molecular Scale: Facts vs. Model-based Reasoning

• High school students learn atomic-molecular facts, such as the equation for cellular respiration.

• They have a great deal of trouble using those facts as working models:– What happens to the atoms in a person’s fat

when he loses weight? (They are burned for energy.)

– How do trees grow? (photosynthesis) Where does the mass of trees come from? (water and soil nutrients)

Large-scale Systems: Scientific Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle

Combustion, cellular respiration

Photosynthesis

Matter: CO2, H2O, and minerals

Matter: Organic matter & O2

Biosynthesis, digestion, food webs, fossil fuel formation

Movement of CO2, H2O, and minerals

Energy: Sunlight

Energy: Chemicalpotential energy

Energy: Work& heat

Informal Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle

Animals

Plants

Carbon dioxide

Oxygen

Decay

Plants

Nutrients Food chains

SunlightThe oxygen-carbon

dioxide cycle

Energy sources for plants: sunlight, nutrients, water

Energy sources for animals: food,

water

Decomposers don’t need energy

Findings: Inquiry

• Connections between first-hand inquiry (learning through your own investigations) and second-hand inquiry (learning from claims made by other people or in the media)

• Key questions:– Who do you trust?– What evidence do you trust?– What arguments do you trust?

Changes in Public Opinion

Human Activity Natural Geological

Causes

April, 2008 47% 34%

January, 2010 34% 47%

What causes climate change?

• Note the volatility of public opinion •People decide about the science of climate change the same way as they decide about health care legislationSource: Newsweek, March 1, 2010

Findings from Our Research

How do students make decisions about scientific facts relevant to environmental issues?•USUALLY use personal and family knowledge•USUALLY use ideas from media and popular culture•OFTEN make judgments about bias and self interest in people and organizations making knowledge claims•RARELY make use of knowledge they learned in school•RARELY make explicit judgments about the scientific quality of evidence or arguments (though our questions on this weren’t great)(Covitt, Tan, Tsurusaki, & Anderson, in revision)

What’s Our Goal? Scientific Inquiry and Argument

• Uncertainty as a core issue for scientific inquiry (Metz, 2004)

• Scientific position: – Our knowledge of past, present, and future is

inevitably uncertain– BUT We can reduce uncertainty, by:

• Giving authority to arguments from evidence rather than individual people

• Commitment to rigor in research methods• Collective validation through consensus of

scientific communities

Values in the Science Curriculum

• The value of scientific knowledge and arguments from evidence should have an explicit role in the curriculum– Scientific knowledge should play an essential role in

environmental decisions. In particular, it can help us anticipate the effects of our individual and collective actions.

– We should use scientific standards (authority of evidence, rigor in method, collective validation) to judge knowledge claims.

• We should NOT teach what to do about climate change or other environmental issues in the required science curriculum

• If people truly understand the effects of their actions, then they are much more likely to make responsible decisions.

What’s at Stake?

• CORE GOAL OF SCIENCE EDUCATION:– Give people the ability to choose between scientific

and force-dynamic discourse; don’t leave them without a choice

– Make a place for scientific knowledge and arguments from scientific evidence in political discourse and personal decision making.

• NOTE that this is a different goal from getting people to accept the authority of science.

• Never in my career has the science curriculum been so important

Thanks to Contributors to this Research

• Hui Jin, Jing Chen, Li Zhan, Josephine Zesaguli, Hsin-Yuan Chen, Brook Wilke, Hamin Baek, Kennedy Onyancha, Jonathon Schramm, Courtney Schenk, Jennifer Doherty, and Dante Cisterna at Michigan State University

• Lindsey Mohan at National Geographic Education Programs• Kristin Gunckel at the University of Arizona• Beth Covitt at the University of Montana• Laurel Hartley at the University of Colorado, Denver• Edna Tan at the University of North Carolina• Blakely Tsurusaki at Washington State University, Pullman • Rebecca Dudek at Holly, Michigan, High School• Mark Wilson, Karen Draney, Jinnie Choi, and Yong-Sang Lee

at the University of California, Berkeley.

Extra Slides

The Keeling Curve as an Example

What Does it Mean to “Understand” the Keeling Curve?

• Content answer: Students should be able to explain the mechanisms and predict the effects of atmospheric change– Yearly cycle– Long-term trend

• Practice answer: Students should be able to use what they know to act as informed citizens

Level 1 Example: Force-dynamic Discourse

(4th grader; American pre-interview: baby growth)Researcher: Do you think the girl’s body uses the food for energy?Watson: Yes. Researcher: Do you know how?Watson: Because the food helps make energy for the girl so then she can like learn how to walk and crawl and stuff. And it will also help the baby so it will be happy, be not mean and stuff. Researcher: Yes, ok. Let’s talk about the next one. You said sleep, right? So say a little bit about that. How is it related to growth?Watson: Because it will make it somehow so you’ll grow. Because that way you will get more energy so you can like run and jump, and jump rope and walk and play. And that’s it. Researcher: Does the baby’s body need sleeping for energy?Watson: Yes. Because then it will be happy and it won’t cry. And it will be able to play and make it so it will eat and stuff. Researcher: What do you think is energy? What energy is like?Watson: I think energy is like, it helps it grow and it helps it so it won’t be crabby, like when you get mad.

Level 4: Example: Scientific Discourse

(7th Grader; Post-interview: tree growth)Researcher: So how does a tree use air?

Eric: The carbon dioxide in the air contains molecules, atoms, I mean specifically oxygen and carbon, which will store away and break apart to store it and use as food.I: So do you think that the tree also uses water? Eric: Yes. The tree also needs water. All living things do. The water is used to help break apart food so that the tree can have energy. It’s also used to combine parts of the water molecules together with parts of the carbon dioxide in photosynthesis and used as food.

Researcher: So, you know, the tree, it begins as a very small plant. So over time, it will grow into a big tree and it will gain a lot of mass. Where does the increased mass come from?Eric: The mass comes from the food that the tree is producing during photosynthesis, which is mostly carbon and hydrogen pieces bonded together and that is then being stored away

… … Researcher: So you also talk about energy, light energy. So where does light energy go?

Eric: Light energy is, first it’s absorbed through the leaves. It is then converted to a stored energy by combining the hydrogen and carbon atoms into various molecules.

Standards that Are Compact, Coherent, and Incomplete

• 2001: Project 2061 conference on developing curriculum materials based on Benchmarks

• My conclusion: Too many Benchmarks to teach them all for understanding

• Question: What is the filter that can help us make wise choices about what to leave out?

Social Utility as the Filter

• My conclusion (based on experience with Benchmarks, NSES, NAEP, Michigan standards): Scientific importance does not work politically as a filter.

• Every topic in the current standards has passionate advocates who make compelling arguments for its scientific importance

• Alternate question: Will our nation suffer if most citizens do not understand this?

What Happened?

• Congressional debates about climate change

• East Anglia E-mails

• Record snowfall in Washington, DC

• Rajendra Pachauri consulting

• IPCC mistake on Himalayan glaciers

Note that these affect judgments about people and organizations, but generally not arguments from evidence

Possible Consequences

• Political discourse and personal decisions dominated by different subcultures each constructing their own “reality”—the Prius drivers, the SUV drivers, etc.

• BUT the Earth’s atmosphere, water systems, and biological communities do not know about political discourse

• In 50 years we will know for sure who is right and who is wrong

• Our children and grandchildren will live with the consequences

Learning Progressions: Addressing Both the Forest and the Trees

“Learning progressions are descriptions of the successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about a topic that can follow one another as students learn about and investigate a topic over a broad span of time.” (NRC, Taking Science to School, 2007)

Upper Anchor: Processes in Socio-ecological Systems(Loop Diagram based on LTER Decadal Plan)

• What is essential scientific knowledge for ALL our citizens?• Only a few things, and this is one of them.

Informal Interpretation of Heredity and Environment

Heredity and environment both shape the organism by“pulling in different directions.”

Scientific Interpretation of Heredity and Environment

Genetic resources constrain phenotypic plasticity

Phenotype (morphology and behavior)is determined by organism’s responseto biological community and non-living environment

Notes about scientific model:• Heredity and environment act differently• Phenotypic response does not affect genetic resources• Diversity of genetic resources becomes essential for change

Hypothesis: Alternate Learning Trajectories

LEVEL 4. Causal Reasoning Pattern: Successful Constraints on Processes Across Scales

LEVEL 3. Causal Reasoning Pattern: Unsuccessful Constraints on

Processes

LEVEL 3. Causal Reasoning Pattern: Successful Constraints on atomic-molecular

processes with limited details

LEVEL 2. Causal Reasoning Pattern: Hidden Mechanisms involving changes

of matter or energy

LEVEL 2. Causal Reasoning Pattern: Macroscopic changes of matter/energy

constrained by conservation laws

LEVEL 1. Macro Force-dynamic Causation

Structure-first Learning Trajectory

Principles-first Learning Trajectory

?

Matter and Energy Process Tool Example

Car Running

Process:

Scale:

(Matter Input) (Matter Output)

(Energy Output)(Energy Input)

Chemical Energy Heat

Motion

Octane (CH3(CH2)6CH3)(liquid)

Water (H2O) (gas)

Oxygen (O2) (gas) Carbon Dioxide (CO2) (gas)

Combustion

Atomic-molecular

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