Using Learning Progressions Research to Teach for Environmental Science Literacy

1. Using Learning Progressions Research to Teach for Environmental Science LiteracyRelated Paper Set Proposed for the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Indianapolis, IN, March 25-28, 2012Website: http://edr1.educ.msu.edu/EnvironmentalLit/index.htm

2. Thanks to Funders This research is supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation: 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), CCE: A Learning Progression-based System for Promoting Understanding of Carbon-transforming Processes (DRL 1020187), and Tools for Reasoning about Water in Socio-ecological Systems (DRL-1020176). 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(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the United States Department of Energy

3. Thanks to Contributors to this Research • Jing Chen, Li Zhan, Jonathon Schramm, Jennifer Doherty, Amy Lark, Dante Cisterna, Jenny Dauer, Jiwon Kim, Hannah Miller, Staci Sharp, Courtney Lannen, Kathryn Oleszkowicz, Etiowo Usoro, Michigan State University • Beth Covitt, University of Montana • Kristin Gunckel, University of Arizona • Hui Jin, The Ohio State University • RET’s: Marcia Angle, Lawton Schools, Rebecca Drayton, Gobles Schools, Cheryl Hach, Kalamazoo Math & Science Center, Liz Ratashak, Vicksburg Schools, Debi Kilmartin, Gull Lake Schools • Mark Wilson, Karen Draney, Jinnie Choi, and HyoJeong Shin at the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research Center

4. Overview of Introduction • What’s old: Continuing goals, frameworks, and methods • What’s coming up: Alternate learning trajectories and teaching experiments • What’s new in our results: Papers in this session

5. What’s Old Continuing Models, Frameworks, and Methods

6. Definitions • Environmental science literacy is the capacity to understand and participate in evidence-based discussions of socio-ecological systems. • Learning progressions are descriptions of increasingly sophisticated ways of thinking about or understanding a topic

7. Defining Environmental Science Literacy: Processes in Socio-ecological Systems

8. 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?

9. 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.

10. Learning Progressions Include: • A learning progression framework, describing levels of achievement for students learning (Model of cognition) • Assessment tools that reveal students’ reasoning: written assessments and clinical interviews (Observation and interpretation) • Teaching tools and strategies that help students make transitions from one level to the next (Empirical validation)

11. What Progresses? • Discourse:“a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group” (Gee, 1991, p. 3) • Practices: inquiry, accounts, citizenship • Knowledge of processes in human and environmental systems

12. 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.)

13. Learning Progression Levels of Achievement for Accounts (Explanations and Predictions) Level 4: Coherent scientific accounts: Students successfully apply fundamental principles such as conservation of matter and energy and genetic continuity to phenomena at multiple scales in space and time (generally consistent with current national science education standards and with the draft framework for new standards). Level 3: Incomplete or confused scientific accounts: Students show awareness of important scientific principles and of models at smaller and larger scales, but they have difficulty connecting accounts at different scales and applying principles consistently. Level 2: Elaborated force-dynamic accounts:Students’ accounts continue to focus on actors, enablers, and natural tendencies of inanimate materials, but they add detail and complexity, especially at larger and smaller scales. Level 1: Simple force-dynamic accounts: focus on actors, enablers, and natural tendencies of inanimate materials, using relatively short time frames and macroscopic scale phenomena.

14. Level 4: Scientific Account Carbon Cycling and Energy Flow

15. Level 2 Accounts “Matter and Energy Cycles” 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

16. Data Sources • Carbon: student tests and interviews from teaching experiments in grades 4-12 (collected 2009-10: papers 1-3) • Carbon: pretests and posttests in college classrooms (collected 2009-11: papers 3 and 4) • Water: professional development focusing on formative assessment and tools for reasoning

17. What’s Coming Up Plant teaching experiments DRK-12 Project

18. Continuing Development and Data Collection • 2011-12: Continuation of teaching experiments at four sites: Baltimore, Michigan, Colorado, Santa Barbara • Carbon teaching experiment at the university level (some preliminary results in paper 4) • 2011-12: Carbon TIME (Transformations In Matter and Energy) project • Six units: Systems and scale, plants, animals, decomposers, carbon cycling, human energy systems • 24 teachers at 6 sites: Baltimore, Michigan, Colorado, Santa Barbara, Bellevue, WA, Seattle • 2011-12: Reasoning Tools for Understanding Water Systems project: Montana and Arizona

19. Papers in this Session • Analyzing students learning performances in terms of practices for developing accounts, by Hui Jin, Li Zhan, Dante Cisterna, and Charles W. Anderson • Students’ learning performance and its relation to teaching practice, by Li Zhan, Dante Cisterna, and Charles W. Anderson • Developing and validating scoring procedures for students’ written accounts of carbon-transforming processes, by Jennifer Doherty and Karen Draney • Analyzing college students’ learning about carbon-transforming processes, by Jonathon Schramm, Jennifer Doherty, and Charles W. Anderson • Using a Water Systems Learning Progression to Design and Test Formative Assessments and Tools for Reasoning, by Beth A. Covitt and Kristin L. Gunckel

20. Extra Slides

21. What’s New Teaching Experiments in 2010-11

22. Teaching Experiments in Four Locations • Carbon: plant growth and cellular respiration • Biodiversity: macroinvertebrates and other organisms in stream bed leaf packs • Water: water budget for school grounds Locations: Baltimore, rural Michigan, Colorado, Santa Barbara

23. Teaching Experiments: Inquiry and Application Activity Sequences

24. A Learning Progression Story: Food Chain on a BEST Plot Black Medick Rabbit Coyote Death and decomposition

25. Level 1 Account of the Food Chain • Carbon and biodiversity: • This is a story with heroes (e.g., the bunny as Bambi’s friend Thumper) and villains (the marauding coyote) • This is emotionally different from other food chain stories (e.g., cricket and garter snake, mouse and owl) • The plant (not specifically identified as medick) is there for the rabbit to eat, but it has a purpose in life, too—to grow • Death of the coyote is what he deserves • Explanations focus on why the plants and animals act as they do, not how • Water: • Water is there for the rabbit to drink or wash in • Rain helps the plants grow • People could pollute the water • Polluted water looks or smells bad

26. Level 2 Account of the Food Chain: Carbon • Moving toward microscopic scale: Rabbit, coyote, and medick all have internal parts • Starting to account for how plants and animals accomplish their purposes, not just why • Internal organs with special functions (but not yet transformation of matter • Food as special and necessary enabler (but different from living plants and animals) • Energy (life energy) as something plants and animals need for purposeful action • Large-scale connections: the circle of life • Food chain as cause-effect sequence (not flow of matter or energy) • Plants help animals by providing food and oxygen • Decay of plants and animals enriches soil

27. Learners’ Accounts “Matter and Energy Cycles” 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

28. Level 2 Account of the Food Chain: Biodiversity • Noticing: recognition of biodiversity • There are different kinds of plants that rabbit might like more or less • Rabbit and coyote related to other kinds of animals (start of phylogenetic connections) • Decomposers help us by making plants and animals decay • Predator-prey relationships as start of functional grouping (producers, consumers, decomposers) • Storytelling: community in an environment • Rabbit, coyote, plant all adapted to living in Michigan • Connected by predator-prey relationships • Predators affect prey, and vice versa, but don’t see indirect connections (e.g., coyote affecting medick) • Limited knowledge of symbiotic relationships

29. Level 2 Account of the Food Chain: Water • Movement of water • Water in streams as coming from somewhere and going to somewhere (maybe not so sure about water in ponds) • Water soaking into ground being brought back up by plants (not yet connected to ground water) • Generic “water cycle” not connected to water that plants and animals use on BEST plots • Water quality (substances in water) • Water quality affected by macroscopic objects in water (trash, dead animals) • Water quality affected by bad actions by people

30. Level 3 Account of the Food Chain: Carbon • Microscopic scale: Rabbit, coyote, medick and decomposers all are systems (not just actors) made of living cells • Internal systems move food and oxygen to cells and waste away from cells • Photosynthesis and cellular respiration as important cellular processes (functions still not entirely clear) • Food as source of matter and energy for growth and life functions (distinctions between matter and energy still not very clear) • Molecules present in food and in cells, but connections between living systems and chemical change still fuzzy • Large-scale connections: matter and energy cycles • Food chain as flow of matter or energy (matter and energy both recycle) • Still separate nutrient and O2-CO2 cycles • Animals, decomposers, combustion all require food/fuel and O2 and produce CO2

31. Level 3: Nutrient and O2-CO2 Cycles

32. Level 3 Account of the Food Chain: Biodiversity • Noticing: recognition of biodiversity • Medick, rabbit, coyote, decomposers are all members of a community that includes many other organisms, which can be classified phylogenetically • Each organism also has different functional roles in the community (e.g., medick both feeds rabbit and enriches soil) • Storytelling: community assembly • Expanding time scale: this community has a history, contingent on events in the past and future • Biotic: More complicated relationships: symbiotic relationships, trophic cascade (e.g., coyote affects medick population) • Dispersal and reproduction: All the populations can spread or shrink geographically or get larger or smaller over time (but limited understanding of survivorship curves) • Abiotic factors recognized, but without detailed accounts of how they affect survival, growth, and dispersal

33. Level 3 Account of the Food Chain: Water • Movement of water • Expanding geographic and time scales: water on this plot is in a watershed and comes from precipitation • Water that soaks into ground can go to groundwater or medick can put it back into the atmosphere through transpiration • Aware of multiple pathways that water could follow, but no principled way to decide where it will actually go • Water quality (substances in water) • Water quality affected by substances or organisms that can be dissolved or suspended in water • Substances in water may be invisible • Limited ability to characterize substances chemically or to account for where they come from or how they could be removed

34. Level 4 Account of the Food Chain: Carbon • Microscopic scale: Rabbit, coyote, medick and decomposers all are systems that chemically transform matter and energy • Food and tissues of organisms are made of organic matter (biomass) including carbohydrates, fats, proteins, nucleic acids • Organelles in cells make organic matter from inorganic matter (photosynthesis), make other organic substances from glucose and minerals (biosynthesis, digestion), and oxidize organic matter (cellular respiration • Energy is stored in C-C and C-H bonds of organic molecules • Large-scale connections: the circle of life • Matter cycles, with the most important matter cycle being the carbon cycle: CO2 and H2O to biomass and O2 • Energy flows: sunlight to chemical energy to motion and heat

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

36. Level 4 Account of the Food Chain: Biodiversity • Noticing: recognition of biodiversity • Medick, rabbit, coyote, decomposers are all members of a biological community that endures and changes over time • They are members of populations with evolutionary histories and phylogenetic connections • Each population has multiple functional roles and different populations can play similar roles (functional redundancy) • Storytelling: community assembly • Reproduction: Age distributions in populations reflect reproductive strategies and survivorship curves • Dispersal: Populations spread to new areas in different ways • Biotic interactions: Multiple relationships among populations, both direct and indirect • Abiotic factors both affect and are affected by biotic interactions

37. Level 4 Account of the Food Chain: Water • Movement of water • Water flows through connected systems along multiple pathways at multiple scales • Driving forces (gravity, changes of state) and constraining factors (conservation of matter, topography, porosity) determine pathways of water • Water quality (substances in water) • Water quality depends on solutions and suspensions that can be described chemically • Substances move into, out of, and with water by multiple mechanisms that affect different substances in different ways (filtration, chemical reactions, evaporation and condensation, etc.)