Approaching Ecological Literacy from the “Bottom Up”

1. Approaching Ecological Literacy from the “Bottom Up” Charles W. (Andy) Anderson Michigan State University Conference of the Ecological Society of America Milwaukee, August 6, 2008

2. Contributors • People: Brook Wilke, Joyce Parker, John Merrill, Merle Heideman, Tammy Long, Gail Richmond, Diane Ebert-May, Janet Batzli, Lindsey Mohan, Jing Chen, Beth Covitt, Kristin Gunckel, Hsin-Yuan Chen, Edna Tan, Josie Zesaguli, Blakely Tsurusaki, Ed Smith, Jim Gallagher from Michigan State University; Janet Batzli from University of Wisconsin; Chris Wilson from BSCS; Laurel Hartley form University of Colorado, Denver; and Mark Wilson, Karen Draney, Yong-Sang Lee, and Jinnie Choi from University of California-BerkeleyProjects: MSU Environmental Literacy Project, Center for Curriculum Materials in Science, NSF CCLI - Developing Diagnostic Question Clusters for Tracing Matter, NSF CCLI –Diagnostic Question Clusters to Improve Student Reasoning and Understanding in General Biology Courses, NSF ROLE - Developing a research-based learning progression for the carbon cycle: Transformations of matter and energy in biogeochemical systems

3. Parts of This Presentation • What’s at stake? Looking at ecological literacy from the bottom up. • Learning progressions: Combining top down and bottom up approaches • Research results on upper and lower anchors: From forces to laws • Research results on intermediate levels: How do students get here from there? • Reconsidering what’s at stake: Priorities for science education

4. 1. What’s at stake? Looking at ecological literacy from the bottom up.

5. Top Down vs. Bottom Up • “Top down” approach to ecological literacy: Consult experts to see what knowledge and practices are most important. • “Bottom up” approach: Study learners’ ideas and understanding to see what knowledge and practices are most attainable.

6. Literacy as Reading One measure of ecological literacy: The ability to understand and critically evaluate scientifically-based arguments about socio-ecological issues, such as: • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) • Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. • ESA position statement on biofuels • Opposing arguments

7. Excerpt from ESA Biofuels Position Statement [Compared crops intensively managed to maximize yields] Lower yields from an unfertilized native prairie, for example, may be acceptable in light of the other benefits provided by native plants in an agricultural landscape. These include: • Minimized flooding and increased groundwater recharge [water]; • Enhanced carbon sequestration in the soil because tilling would be unnecessary [carbon]; • Genetic diversity [biodiversity];….

8. Question: Are these publications just for the experts, or do members of the general public need to understand them?

9. What Do People Understand? Students Taking Pilot Test on Carbon-transforming processes • Science majors taking initial cell biology course at Michigan State University • College chemistry is prerequisite for course • 23 students answered this question on first day of class

10. An Example Question Gasoline is mostly a mixture of hydrocarbons such as octane: C8H18. Decide whether each of the following statements is true or false about what happens to the atoms in a molecule of octane when it burns.

11. True or False • Some of the atoms in the octane are incorporated into carbon dioxide in the air. • True is correct answer • How many students would you guess answered “true?” • 20/23 answered “true.”

12. True or False • Some of the atoms in the octane are incorporated into air pollutants such as ozone or nitric oxide. • False is correct answer • How many students would you guess answered “true?” • 16/23 answered “true.”

13. True or False • Some of the atoms in the octane are converted into energy that moves the car. • False is correct answer • How many students would you guess answered “true?” • 15/23 answered “true.”

14. This is NOT a “trick question” • Consistent with general patterns in student responses. • Other examples with similar patterns: • Plant growth (mass comes from the soil) • Weight loss in humans (mass converted to energy) • Decay (mass is consumed or returned to the soil • Key aspects of student reasoning • Difficulty tracing matter through chemical changes involving gases and solids or liquids • Energy as “fudge factor”

15. Excerpt from ESA Biofuels Position Statement [Compared crops intensively managed to maximize yields] Lower yields from an unfertilized native prairie, for example, may be acceptable in light of the other benefits provided by native plants in an agricultural landscape. These include: • Minimized flooding and increased groundwater recharge [water]; • Enhanced carbon sequestration in the soil because tilling would be unnecessary [carbon]; • Genetic diversity [biodiversity];…. Question: What does “enhanced carbon sequestration in soil” mean to these students?

16. Why Should We Care? • Tom Friedman on Egyptian regime spending: • Fuel subsidies: $11 billion/year • Education: $6 billion/year • “…the pain of removing the subsidies would be politically suicidal.” • John McCain on offshore drilling: And with gasoline running at more than $4 a barrel ... a gallon ... I wish ... $4 a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians

17. Conclusions • People, and politicians, will ignore what the experts say if the message is painful and they don’t understand it. • This is a problem for science education

18. 2. Learning progressions Combining top down and bottom up approaches

19. Learning Progressions: Combining Top Down and Bottom Up “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)

20. Learning Progressions Include: • Upper anchor: Societal expectations and values (top down) • Lower anchor: Results of research on understanding of learners at the beginning of the age span (bottom up). • Intermediate levels of understanding that link lower and upper anchors

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

22. Criteria for Validation of Learning Progressions • Conceptual coherence: a learning progression should “make sense,” in that it tells a comprehensible and reasonable story of how initially naïve students can develop mastery in a domain. • Compatibility with current research: a learning progression should build on findings or frameworks of the best current research about student learning. • Empirical validation: The assertions we make about student learning should be grounded in empirical data about real students.

23. Development and Validation: An Iterative Process • Develop initial framework (upper anchor, lower anchor, intermediate levels) • 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….

24. 3. Research results: Upper and lower anchors From forces to laws

25. Unit of Analysis: Knowledge and Practice Practices of Ecologically Literate Citizens • Inquiry: developing accounts by learning from experience • Accounts: using scientific knowledge to explain and predict • Citizenship: making environmentally responsible decisions based on accounts • Private roles: learner, consumer, worker • Public roles: voter, volunteer, advocate

26. Strands: Types of Accounts • Carbon: Processes that generate, transform, and oxidize organic carbon in socio-ecological systems • Water: Processes that move and transform water, and substances in water in socio-ecological systems • Biodiversity: Processes that affect survival, growth, reproduction, and selection of organisms in socio-ecological systems

27. Processes We Ask About • Carbon: plant and animal growth, animal movement, decay, combustion • Water: rain and snow, water soaking into the ground, springs, wells, lakes and streams, water pollution and purification • Biodiversity: organisms living their life cycles, evolution, succession

28. Lower Anchor: Balance of “Forces” • Force-dynamic causation: Things happen because of the interplay of “forces” • “Natural tendencies” of organisms (plants, animals), materials (water), or other agents (flames) • Enablers that help agents to express their natural tendencies (e.g., food, air, water, warm conditions • Antagonists that work against expression of natural tendencies • Strongest force wins!

29. Scientific Explanations: Hierarchy of Systems and the Rule of Law • Hierarchy of systems at different scales. From macroscopic, visible processes and systems to: • Explanations of mechanisms based on hidden subsystems and • Explanations of contexts that connect accounts in space and time. • Principles or laws that always apply in their domains. From strongest force wins to all parts of the system are constrained by principles: • Conservation of matter (mass and atoms) • Conservation of energy • Fixed genetic resources for every organism

30. Competing Views of Science of Global Climate Change • NASA scientists (e.g., James Hanson): Scientific research is governed by principles--replicability of data, falsifiability of models, etc. Bush administration is breaking the rules. • Bush administration: These scientists are all Democrats. They are our antagonists, so they shouldn’t be expecting us to act as their enablers.

31. Lower AnchorExplanations of Events • Eating and growth (carbon): Food goes to your stomach, then it helps you to grow (food enables your natural tendency to grow) • Puddle soaking into the ground (water): Water is “soaked up” by the ground (natural tendency of water to run downhill and ground to soak it up) • Development of dog breeds (biodiversity): dogs adapt to living with humans (natural tendency of animals to adapt; humans enable adaptation)

32. Scientific Explanations of Events • Carbon: We explain growth by tracing food molecules through digestion, transport in blood, biosynthesis in cells • Water: We trace water and dissolved/suspended substances as they enter groundwater. • Biodiversity: humans breed dogs selectively. Thus dogs with genetic traits that we like survive and reproduce.

33. 4. Research results: Intermediate levels How do students get here from there?

34. Linking Processes: 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 cultural models Green: Upper anchor accounts based on scientific models

35. Linking Principles: Comparing Elements of Accounts • Life: What is the difference between living and non-living systems? • Lower anchor: “Vital force” or natural tendency of living things • Upper anchor: Tracing matter (cellular metabolic processes) and tracing information (homeostasis and genetics) • Matter: What’s the “stuff” in processes • Lower anchor: Visible parts of systems, including flames, excluding gases • Upper anchor: Chemical substances, made of atoms and molecules that can be transformed according to chemical principles

36. Linking Principles: Comparing Elements of Accounts • Cause/agency: What makes things happen? • Lower anchor: Balance of “forces:” natural tendencies, enablers, antagonists • Upper anchor: Second Law of Thermodynamics: Degradable energy • Energy: What is energy? • Lower anchor: All purpose enabler, fudge factor • Upper anchor: Constraint on processes • Scale: Mechanisms and contexts • Lower anchor: “Forces” change visible things • Upper anchor: Hidden atomic-molecular mechanisms, connections through large-scale systems and processes

37. Intermediate Levels:Upper Elementary through College • Level 4: Successful principled, model-based reasoning about processes in socio-ecological systems (high school standards). • Level 3: “School science” narratives of processes in systems (middle school standards). • Level 2: Events driven by hidden mechanisms (elementary standards). • Level 1: Macroscopic accounts based on force-dynamic causation (natural tendencies with enablers or antagonists) and linked by informal cultural models

38. 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 Level 4 Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle

39. Level 1 Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle • Plants grow: Natural tendency enabled by sunlight, water, air, soil nutrients • Animals eat and grow: Natural tendency enabled by food, air, water, exercise • Plants and animals die: Natural tendency enabled by age, disease, etc. • Dead things decay and enrich the soil: Natural tendency enabled by moisture, soil, warmth

40. 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 Level 2 Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle

41. Carbon Examples Where does the weight of an oak tree come from? • Level 1 example: I think its leaves. Leaves comes from trees; the weight comes from when a plant grows the weight also grows bigger • Level 2 example: I think the plant's increase comes from the minerals in the soil help it increase weight. • Level 4 example: The plants increase in weight comes from CO2 in the air. The carbon in that molecule is used to create glucose, and several polysaccharides which are used for support.

42. Water Accounts • Types of processes: movement of water, substances in water • Level 1 accounts: surface water running downhill, underground ponds; “pollution” as quality of water rather than materials in water • Level 4 accounts: flow of water (visible and invisible) through watersheds; other materials going in and out of solution and suspension

43. Water Example Question If a water pollutant is put into the river at town C, which towns (if any) would be affected by the pollution?

44. Water Example Responses • Level 1 example: B,C - cause they are closer . • Level 2 example: A, B - These towns would be affected is that towns A and B are connected to C so that the pollutant would spread through C to A and B rivers causing a problem. • Level 4 example: A - Since the river will run downhill to a large body of water, it can't go upstream to B and it is not connected to D. On the way to the lake it crosses by A.

45. Biodiversity Accounts • Types of processes: Individual life cycles in niche and habitat, evolution, succession • Level 1 accounts: Individuals adapt to environment, undifferentiated landscapes • Level 4 accounts: • Individuals live or die with fixed genetic resources • Evolution as change in populations caused by reproduction and selection • Succession as change in ecosystems caused by “selection” of populations

46. Biodiversity Example Question Farmers often use pesticides to help prevent insects from eating their crops. Over time, the insects slowly become resistant to these pesticides, and so the farmers have to use different pesticides to protect their crops. Tell a story about how the insects become resistant to the pesticides.

47. Biodiversity Example Responses • Level 1 example: Their bodies try to fight off the pesticides. Once they figure out how to fight them it's easy for them to fight so the pesticides no longer work. • Level 2 example: The insects eventually become immune to the pesticides because when one insect takes it in, then they reproduce there is already pesticides in the offspring so they are used to it and the pesticide doesn't really affect them. • Level 4 example: When the crops are sprayed some bugs are killed but some may live and when the living mate they will give their kids genes to help them survive through the pesticides so the bugs adapt to the pesticides and because the bugs reproduce fast and don’t live long it doesn't take long for them to adapt to the pesticides.

48. 5. Reconsidering what’s at stake Priorities for science education

49. Excerpt from ESA Biofuels Position Statement Lower yields from an unfertilized native prairie, for example, may be acceptable in light of the other benefits provided by native plants in an agricultural landscape. These include: • Minimized flooding and increased groundwater recharge [water]; • Enhanced carbon sequestration in the soil because tilling would be unnecessary [carbon]; • Genetic diversity [biodiversity];….

50. Accomplishments and Challenges • These “simple” statements come from a world view shared by ecologists who have come to take its complexities for granted • For students, developing the knowledge it takes to understand and evaluate these statements is an immense intellectual challenge • As science educators we must understand and respond to our students and the science