Waterbury Lecture, Pennsylvania State University

Charles W. (Andy) Anderson, Michigan State University

December 9, 2010

Learning Progressions, National Standards, and Environmental Science Literacy

What I’ll Talk about

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

2. Climate change and carbon cycling

3. Learning Progressions: Scientific and informal discourse

4. Responding with active learning strategies

5. Conclusion: What’s at stake?

1. Environmental science literacy and responsible citizenship as

goals for science teaching

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.

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?

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.

2. Climate change and carbon cycling

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

The Keeling Curve as an Example

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

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?

Putting the Pieces Together: The “Loop Diagram”

Using Electric

appliances

Driving Vehicles

Burning fossil fuels

Body Movement; Dead Organism Body Decay

Plant Growth Animal GrowthOrganic Carbon O

xidation(Com

bustion)

Organic Carbon Oxidation (Cellular Respiration)

Organic Carbon Generation

(Photosynthesis)

Organic Carbon Transformation (Biosynthesis,

digestion)

Human Socio-economical Systems

Ecosystem

Atmosphere

CO2

LE

Heat Heat

CO2

CO2

CE: Chemical Energy; LE: Light Energy; OrgC: Organic Carbon-containing Molecules

OrgC

CE

CE

OrgC

CEOrgC CEOrgC

Matter ConservationEnergy ConservationEnergy Degradation

Matter ConservationEnergy ConservationEnergy Degradation

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?

The Keeling Curve as an Example

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.

3. Learning Progressions: Scientific and informal discourse

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)

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

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

Iterative Research Process

Upper Anchor: Scientific Account Carbon Cycling and Energy Flow

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?

Learners’ Accounts “Matter and Energy Cycles”

Separate nutrient and oxygen-carbon dioxide cyclesMajority of middle school, high school, and college students

A Better Representation of Learners’ Accounts

People & animals

Nutrients

Decay

Sunlight

CarbonDioxide

People & animals

• 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

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.)

(needs or enablers)

(results that achieve purposes of actors)

Actors

With Abilities

And Purposes

In Settings

A complete force-dynamic explanation describes actors, enablers, purposes, settings, and results

Informal (Force-dynamic) Accounts

(energy input)

(energy output)

(matter input) (matter output)

Systems

Following principles

At multiple scales

A complete scientific explanation describes processes constrained by principles

in systems at multiple scales

Macroscopic Scale: Grouping and Explaining Carbon-transforming Processes

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

4. Responding with active learning strategies

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

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)

Powers of 10 Chart

Adding Representations of Systems to the Powers of 10 Chart

(energy input)

(energy output)

(matter input) (matter output)Plant Growth

Scale:

Inquiry and Application Activity Sequences

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

5. Conclusion: What’s at stake?

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)

What’s at Stake? 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 • Many people are like our students, deciding who to trust without being able to judge scientific quality of arguments from evidenceSource: Newsweek, March 1, 2010

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

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)

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

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?

• 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?

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 the University of Washington• Rebecca Dudek at Holly, Michigan, High School• Mark Wilson, Karen Draney, Jinnie Choi, and Yong-Sang Lee

at the University of California, Berkeley.• Charlene D’Avanzo, Hampshire College

Thanks for the Opportunity do Do this Research

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), and CCE: A Learning Progression-based System for Promoting Understanding of Carbon-transforming Processes (DRL 1020187), as well as by NSF CCLI grants DUE 0736943, DUE 0920186, and DUE 0919992. 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.

Extra Slides

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

Response by Instructors

• What to do? Even science majors have trouble tracing matter and energy through carbon-transforming processes.

• Active learning strategies that specifically focus on problematic student reasoning about matter and energy.

Examples of Simple Active Learning Strategies

• Mice in a box: Explain why temperature and CO2 levels rise when a mouse is left in a closed box.

• Students in the classroom: Explain why temperature and CO2 levels rise when the class does jumping jacks in the classroom.

• Dead cow: Trace what happens to the carbon atoms in the carcass of a cow that has died.

• Other examples: http://www.biodqc.org/

Students in a Classroom

• Imagine a large carton with many mice (about 50) inside - so many that their bodies pretty much cover the bottom of the box (there are some air holes so that they have enough air to breathe). The graph below shows the rise in temperature in the box over a 1.5 hours (20 degrees C is about 70 degrees F and 30 degrees C is about 85 degrees F).

0 1 2 Time (hours)

T

emp

erat

ure

(d

egre

es C

elci

us

)

20

25

30

Address the following specific questions:•Assuming that no heat is entering the carton from external sources such as sunlight or a furnace, where is the heat coming from? What process results in this large heat production? What is the name of this process? [Hint: C6H1206

is involved]In addition to the temperature, the concentration of CO2 also changes in the box. In the space below, make a graph with hours on the x axis (like the graph above) and concentration of CO2 on the y axis (typical concentration in a room is about 375 parts per million - ppm). Draw a dotted line showing how you would expect the CO2 concentration to change. (Note – the holes in the box are not large enough to let much CO2 escape, so ignore this loss)

Energy as a “Fudge Factor” in Informal and Mixed Reasoning

147 T and 301 F

When the leaves in a compost pile decay, they lose mass. What do you think happens to the mass of the leaves? Circle True (T) or False (F)

A)T F The mass goes away when the leaves decompose.B)T F The mass is converted to heat energy.C)T F The mass is converted to soil minerals.D)T F The mass is converted to carbon dioxide and water.

NOTES:• Correct answer on C is compatible with both informal and scientific reasoning• Correct answers on A, D are compatible with scientific and mixed reasoning• Correct answer on B is compatible with only scientific reasoning• Results are similar if we ask about “atoms” or “carbon” rather than “mass”

243 T and 205 F418 T and 43 F

271 T and 173 F

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

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

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

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?

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