Learning in High School: Learning Progressions for Environmental Science Literacy

1. Learning in High School: Learning Progressions for Environmental Science Literacy Charles W. (Andy) Anderson Presentation to the National Research Council Board on Science Education December 7, 2009

2. Questions to Address • Are there any cognitive or contextual factors that make learning science in HS different from learning in earlier grades or post-secondary school? • What concepts or skills are most difficult for students to learn in HS? Are these difficult to learn concepts and skill different from those that middle school or post-secondary school students struggle with? • In your learning progression work have you found patterns in the way students made progress toward more sophisticated reasoning about scientific concepts? • What strategies and resources are effective in helping students learn difficult concepts and skills?

3. Question 1 Are there any cognitive or contextual factors that make learning science in HS different from learning in earlier grades or post-secondary school? • No • Developmentally, I see continuity between middle school and high school and college • Institutionally, high schools are uniquely important—the last chance we have to prepare all students for responsible citizenship • This leads to the focus of our work: Learning progressions for environmental science literacy

4. 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)

5. 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.

6. Question 2 What concepts or skills are most difficult for students to learn in HS? Are these difficult to learn concepts and skill different from those that middle school or post-secondary school students struggle with? • Every topic in the curriculum has conceptually difficult aspects (e.g., those discussed in Mohan and Guckel papers and other research) • These are “the trees” • What’s the shape of “the forest”—some common patterns that tie those difficulties together across topics?

7. Five Key Transitions for High School Students (Handout) Hierarchical reasoning: connected spatial and temporal scales • Macroscopic systems and processes • Subsystem models • Large-scale systems Practice and discourse • Principled reasoning (scientific discourse) • Inquiry and arguments from evidence

8. Macroscopic Reasoning: 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

9. Atomic Molecular Facts and Models • 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 are weight loss in humans and in decaying trees alike (They aren’t. Humans burn fat for energy. Trees decay back into the soil because they are dead.)

10. Matter: CO2, H2O, and minerals Matter: Organic matter & O2 Energy: Sunlight Photosynthesis Biosynthesis, digestion, food webs, fossil fuel formation Energy: Chemicalpotential energy Movement of CO2, H2O, and minerals Combustion, cellular respiration Energy: Work& heat Large-scale Systems: Scientific Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle

11. The oxygen-carbondioxide cycle Sunlight Plants Plants Carbon dioxide Oxygen Nutrients Food chains Animals Decay Energy sources for plants: sunlight, nutrients, water Energy sources for animals: food, water Decomposers don’t need energy Informal Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle

12. Informal Interpretation of Heredity and Environment Heredity, determining the essential nature of the organism Phenotype resulting from “balance of forces” between heredity and environment Environment, determining needs and adaptations Heredity and environment both shape the organism by “pulling in different directions.”

13. 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

14. Questions 3 and 4 • In your learning progression work have you found patterns in the way students made progress toward more sophisticated reasoning about scientific concepts? • What strategies and resources are effective in helping students learn difficult concepts and skills?

15. 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 Hypothesis: Alternate Learning Trajectories ?

16. Heat Chemical Energy Motion (Energy Input) (Energy Output) (Matter Input) (Matter Output) Car Running Process: Scale: Combustion Octane (CH3(CH2)6CH3) (liquid) Water (H2O) (gas) Atomic-molecular Oxygen (O2) (gas) Carbon Dioxide (CO2) (gas) Matter and Energy Process Tool Example

17. Powers of Ten Example

18. Final Aspect of Scientific Reasoning: Inquiry and Argument • Uncertainty as a core issue for scientific inquiry • 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

19. Alternate Positions • Truth is relative; everyone is biased or arguing from self interest • High school student’s evaluations of position statements on drilling a well near a northern Michigan trout stream • “… Nestle wants to build the factory so they're going to say any lie to you. • …They [Nestle] might have to pay for the water, so the Dept of EQ might be telling a little bit of fib because they might be getting a little money out of it and people might do a little for money. • (Interviewer asked, “What about Trout Unlimited?”) I think they're telling a fib because they don't want it to be built.” • "These e-mails show a pattern of suppression, manipulation and secrecy that was inspired by ideology, condescension and profit," said U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.

20. Alternate Positions • Truth comes from people who know • “I was at a painting class and the topic of Obama's citizenship came up. Everyone in the room felt that he was born in Kenya.. and raised in Malaysia.. and that the Obama administration had not provided anything to refute it. (What are they trying to hide???) I said he was born in Hawai'i and this had been repeatedly shown to be true.. they countered with the information that his grandmother was quoted as saying she had been at his birth in Kenya! So how do you argue with people that 'just know' things...” (Kay Gross)

21. 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

22. Science Education Gives People Choices • Informal reasoning: • Interplay of “forces” (needs, desires, willpower) determines course of events. The strongest “force” wins. • We search for truth by finding the most authoritative and least biased informants • Scientific reasoning: • The course of events can be predicted by applying laws (e.g., conservation of matter and energy) to hierarchically organized systems • We reduce uncertainty by commitment to arguments from evidence, rigor in method, and collective validation

23. What’s at Stake? • CORE GOAL OF SCIENCE EDUCATION: 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. • CURRENT EVIDENCE: We are achieving this goal for less than 10% of high school students.