Learning Progressions, National Standards, and Environmental Science Literacy

1. Learning Progressions, National Standards, and Environmental Science Literacy Waterbury Lecture, Pennsylvania State University Charles W. (Andy) Anderson, Michigan State University December 9, 2010

2. What I’ll Talk about • Environmental science literacy and responsible citizenship as goals for science teaching • Climate change and carbon cycling • Learning Progressions: Scientific and informal discourse • Responding with active learning strategies • Conclusion: What’s at stake?

3. 1. Environmental science literacy and responsible citizenship as goals for science teaching

4. Environmental Science Literacy as Our Shared Goal • CORE GOAL OF SCIENCE EDUCATION: • Give people the ability to use scientific knowledge to understand the consequences of our policies and practices • 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 or to support particular policies or practices.

5. Practices of Environmentally Literate Citizens 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? Investigating (Inquiry) What is the problem? Who do I trust? What’s the evidence? Deciding What will I do?

6. Strands of Environmental Science Literacy • Carbon. Carbon-transforming processes in socio-ecological systems at multiple scales, including cellular and organismal metabolism, ecosystem energetics and carbon cycling, carbon sequestration, and combustion of fossil fuels. • Water. The role of water and substances carried by water in earth, living, and engineered systems, including the atmosphere, surface water and ice, ground water, human water systems, and water in living systems. • Biodiversity. The diversity of living systems, including variability among individuals in population, evolutionary changes in populations, diversity in natural ecosystems and in human systems that produce food, fiber, and wood.

7. 2. Climate change and carbon cycling

8. Primary Focus Today: Accounts • Explaining: What is happening in this situation? • Predicting: What are the likely consequences of different courses of action? • Specific focus: Accounts of carbon-transforming processes

9. The Keeling Curve as an Example

10. What Does it Mean to “Understand” the Keeling Curve? • Scientific accounts: Students should be able to explain the mechanisms and predict the effects of atmospheric change • Yearly cycle • Long-term trend • Citizenship decisions: Students should be able to use their understanding of how the atmosphere is changing in order to act as informed citizens

11. Keeling Curve Question Keeling Curve Question: The graph given below shows changes in concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over a 47-year span at Mauna Loa observatory at Hawaii, and the annual variation of this concentration. a. Why do you think this graph shows atmospheric carbon dioxide levels decreasing in the summer and fall every year and increasing in the winter and spring? b. Why do you think this graph shows atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increasing from 1960 to 2000?

12. Atmosphere CO2 LE Human Socio-economical Systems Using Electric appliances Driving Vehicles Burning fossil fuels Ecosystem Plant Growth Animal Growth Organic Carbon Transformation (Biosynthesis, digestion) OrgC Organic Carbon Generation (Photosynthesis) Organic Carbon Oxidation (Combustion) OrgC CE CE Body Movement; Dead Organism Body Decay Organic Carbon Oxidation (Cellular Respiration) Putting the Pieces Together: The “Loop Diagram” CO2 Matter Conservation Energy Conservation Energy Degradation CO2 OrgC CE CE OrgC Heat Heat CE: Chemical Energy; LE: Light Energy; OrgC: Organic Carbon-containing Molecules

13. Understanding the Keeling Curve • Which carbon-transforming process is primarily responsible for the yearly cycle in atmospheric CO2 levels? • Which process is primarily responsible for the long-term trend?

14. The Keeling Curve as an Example

15. Climate Change and Carbon-Transforming Processes • Understanding carbon cycling requires students to trace matter and energy through socio-ecological systems at multiple scales in space and time. • Global climate change is driven by imbalances in the carbon cycle, between processes that generate organic carbon—photosynthesis—and processes that oxidize organic carbon—combustion and cellular respiration. • Key idea: Those carbon atoms gotta be SOMEWHERE, and we are moving more and more of them into the atmosphere.

16. 3. Learning Progressions: Scientific and informal discourse

17. Learning Progressions “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)

18. Learning Progressions Include: • A learning progression framework, describing levels of achievement for students learning • Assessment tools that reveal students’ reasoning: written assessments and clinical interviews • Teaching tools and strategies that help students make transitions from one level to the next

19. Levels of Achievement in a Learning Progression Framework • Upper anchor: Knowledge and practice that we decide students need to master: • Practices of environmental science literacy, including scientific accounts of carbon cycling in this example • Supported by arguments about scientific importance and social value • Lower anchor: Knowledge and practice of students at the beginning of the learning process • Empirically determined through our research • Intermediate levels describing transition from lower anchor to upper anchor

20. Iterative Research Process ASSESSMENTS: Develop/revise interview protocol and written assessment items; Collect data INTERPRETATION: Analyze data and identify patterns of students’ learning performances MODEL OF COGNITION: Develop/Revise Learning progression framework

21. Upper Anchor: Scientific Account Carbon Cycling and Energy Flow

22. An Example Question Upper Anchor question: Which items are actually true? Lower anchor and transitional levels question: What is the thinking behind a “true” response for each item?

23. Learners’ Accounts “Matter and Energy Cycles” Separate nutrient and oxygen-carbon dioxide cycles Majority of middle school, high school, and college students

24. A Better Representation of Learners’ Accounts Sunlight People& animals Carbon Dioxide Nutrients People& animals Decay • This is really about actors and their actions. • People are the main actors, then animals, then plants • Everything else is there to meet the needs of actors

25. Contrasts between Force-dynamic and Scientific Discourse (Pinker, Talmy) • Force-dynamic discourse:Actors (e.g., animals, plants, machines) make things happen with the help of enablers that satisfy their “needs.” • This is everyone’s “first language” that we have to master in order to speak grammatical English (or French, Spanish, Chinese, etc.) • Scientific discourse:Systems are composed of enduring entities (e.g., matter, energy) which change according to laws or principles (e.g., conservation laws) • This is a “second language” that is powerful for analyzing the material world • We often have the illusion of communication because speakers of these languages use the same words with different meanings (e.g., energy, carbon, nutrient, etc.)

26. Informal (Force-dynamic) Accounts Actors With Abilities And Purposes In Settings (results that achieve purposes of actors) (needs or enablers) A complete force-dynamic explanation describes actors, enablers, purposes, settings, and results

27. Example of Scientific Accounts (for Carbon) Systems Following principles At multiple scales (energy input) (energy output) (matter output) (matter input) A complete scientific explanation describes processes constrained by principles in systems at multiple scales

28. Macroscopic Scale: Grouping and Explaining Carbon-transforming Processes Black: Linking processes that students at all levels can tell us about Red: Lower anchor accounts based on informal discourse Green: Upper anchor accounts based on scientific models

29. Learning Progression Levels of Achievement Level 4: Correct qualitative tracing of matter and energy through processes at multiple scales. Level 3: Attempts to trace matter and energy, but with errors (e.g., matter-energy confusion, failure to fully account for mass of gases). Level 2: Elaborated force-dynamic accounts (e.g., different functions for different organs) Level 1: Simple force-dynamic accounts.

30. EatBreathe Question • Humans must eat and breathe in order to live and grow. Are eating and breathing related to each other? (Circle one) YES NO • If you circled “Yes” explain how eating and breathing are related. If you circled “No” then explain why they are not related. Give as many details as you can.

31. What Levels Are These Responses? Sonya: Yes. They are related because eating allows metabolic processes to work inside the body and breathing allows processes that need oxygen and food to function properly. Sara: They are related because the energy made from the cells respiration can then be used to break down 'food" such as sugars. You can find other ways to breakdown food, but without the help of ATP from cellular respiration the rate would drastically decrease. Sasha: Yes. They are both essential to life but other than that they perform different functions in the body and are very different processes. Sheila: Yes. When you eat the food gets broken down and put into your bloodstream and brought to cells that need energy. The oxygen you breathe in breaks down the high energy bonds in the food.

32. Learning Progression Levels of Achievement Level 4: Correct qualitative tracing of matter and energy through processes at multiple scales. Level 3: Attempts to trace matter and energy, but with errors (e.g., matter-energy confusion, failure to fully account for mass of gases). Level 2: Elaborated force-dynamic accounts (e.g., different functions for different organs) Level 1: Simple force-dynamic accounts.

33. What Levels Are These Responses? Sonya: Yes. They are related because eating allows metabolic processes to work inside the body and breathing allows processes that need oxygen and food to function properly. Level 2. Sara: They are related because the energy made from the cells respiration can then be used to break down 'food" such as sugars. You can find other ways to breakdown food, but without the help of ATP from cellular respiration the rate would drastically decrease. Level 3. Sasha: Yes. They are both essential to life but other than that they perform different functions in the body and are very different processes. Level 1. Sheila: Yes. When you eat the food gets broken down and put into your bloodstream and brought to cells that need energy. The oxygen you breathe in breaks down the high energy bonds in the food. Level 4.

34. Learning Progressions vs. Current Standards • 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” (like learning a second language) • Interconnected and mutually supporting ideas and practices at all levels, embedded in discourses • Non-canonical ideas and practices can be both useful and important developmental steps

35. 4. Responding with active learning strategies

36. Possible Approaches to Working across the “Language Barrier” • Translation: Engage learners in ways that make sense to them—ways that are compatible with force-dynamic discourse • Education: Help learners to master key elements of scientific discourse • These goals are in tension, but not mutually exclusive • Tools for Reasoning as tools for education

37. The Role of Scale and Principles in Scientific Accounts • Connecting scales: • Macroscopic scale: plant growth, growth and functioning of consumers and decomposers, combustion as key carbon transforming processes • Atomic-molecular scale: photosynthesis, cellular respiration, combustion, digestion and biosynthesis • Large scale: carbon reservoirs and fluxes in earth systems, affected by human populations and technologies • Key principles • Conservation of matter: Carbon atoms gotta go somewhere • Conservation of energy • Degradation of energy (matter cycles, energy flows)

38. Powers of 10 Chart

39. Adding Representations of Systems to the Powers of 10 Chart

40. Plant Growth Matter and Energy Process Tool (energy input) (energy output) (matter output) (matter input) Scale:

41. Inquiry and Application Activity Sequences

42. It Takes Time…. • One course makes a difference in student reasoning, but not enough. • Scientific reasoning is complex, involving systems and principles at multiple scales • Different aspects of scientific reasoning are interdependent: It’s hard to trace matter if you can’t trace energy, or to reason at a global scale if you can’t reason at an atomic molecular scale • Students can make progress in one course, but need a consistent approach in multiple courses to master the “second language” of scientific discourse

43. 5. Conclusion: What’s at stake?

44. Interviews with Students about Environmental Issues 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 taking positions on the issue • 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) • GENERAL PATTERN: Students rely on sources that “speak their language.” (Covitt, Tan, Tsurusaki, & Anderson, in revision)

45. What’s at Stake? Changes in Public Opinion What causes climate change? • Note the volatility of public opinion • Many people are like our students, deciding who to trust without being able to judge scientific quality of arguments from evidence • Source: Newsweek, March 1, 2010

46. 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

47. Recent News • With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate — including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning — accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming. (NY Times, 10/17/10) • "Michael Steel, a spokesman for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, who will become speaker in January, said, “The Select Committee on Global Warming was created by Democrats simply to provide political cover to pass their job-killing national energy tax.” (NY Times, 12/2/10)

48. 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

49. 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.

50. What’s at Stake? • Give people the ability to choose between scientific and force-dynamic discourse; don’t leave them without a choice • Translation is NOT enough • People need to see how the science of climate change is NOT a political issue like health care • How can we make a place for scientific knowledge and arguments from evidence in political discourse and personal decision making?