Questions for Interview Data 1.Which transcripts go together? Try to put together the 4 sets of 4 transcripts each that came from the same students. 2.What are the key characteristics of student responses that you used to group the transcripts? 3.What can you say about levels of achievement? Which student would you say understands the processes best and why? How is the understanding of lower level students different? 4.What are the implications for science teaching? What should we emphasize in teaching about carbon- transforming processes? How should we teach these ideas?

Notes about Interview Data 1.Which transcripts go together? There are patterns that DO connect responses across questions. Students show consistent ways of approaching different phenomena. 2.What are the key characteristics of student responses that you used to group the transcripts? This is a challenge for our research project. We have to identify and describe key characteristics of student thought and language. 3.What can you say about levels of achievement? This follows from #2. We are trying to develop learning progressions. 4.What are the implications for science teaching? This follows from #3.

Presented at the CRCSTL Seminar October, 2007 Andy Anderson Learning Progressions in Environmental Science Literacy

Important Contributors Lindsey Mohan, Chris Wilson, Beth Covitt, Kristin Gunckel, Blakely Tsurusaki, Hui Jin, Jing Chen, Hasan Abdel-Kareem, Rebecca Dudek, Josephine Zesaguli, Hsin-Yuan Chen, Brook Wilke, Ed Smith, Jim Gallagher, and Edna Tan at Michigan State University Mark Wilson, Karen Draney, Jinnie Choi, and Yong-Sang Lee at the University of California, Berkeley.

Environmental Science Literacy The capacity to understand and participate in evidence-based discussions of socio- ecological systems. What scientific knowledge and practices should all students learn that will give them the capacity to be environmentally responsible citizens?

LTER Socio-Ecological Research Collins et al ISSE.

Environmental Literacy “Loop” Diagram

Current Science Curriculum

Implications for Science Curriculum Thinking about any of the issues in the loop requires “completing the loop” Our current curriculum is fragmented and inside the environmental systems box We need to teach what’s inside the box in ways that enable students to connect to the arrows

Practices (all involve “completing the loop”) Inquiry: learning from experience Accounts: using scientific knowledge to explain and predict Citizenship: making environmentally responsible decisions Private roles: learner, consumer, worker Public roles: voter, volunteer, advocate

Strands (Handout Table 1) Carbon: foods and fuels, global climate change, processes that produce, transform, and oxidize organic carbon Water: fresh water, water management, processes that move and distribute water, processes that alter water composition Biodiversity: foods and land for living, settlement and management for production, processes that create, sustain, and reduce biodiversity

What have we learned about how current students engage in these practices? Focus for this session: Accounts of processes in the carbon strand.

Carbon Loop Diagram

Carbon (Handout Table 2) Unit of Analysis: Processes in Environmental Systems Events We Have Asked About (Macroscopic Scale) Plant growth, plants’ need for sunlight, plant gas exchange (generation of organic carbon) Plant and animal growth, digestion, food webs (transformation of organic carbon) Exercise by animals, weight loss, decay (oxidation by cellular respiration) Burning wood and candles, moving cars, appliances (oxidation by combustion) Grandma Johnson, Amazon tree growth (multiple processes)

Learning Progressions Many standards and curricula contain too many disconnected topics that are given equal priority. Too little attention is given to how students’ understanding of a topic can be supported and enhanced from grade to grade. As a result, topics receive repeated, shallow coverage with little consistency, which provides fragile foundation for further knowledge or growth. Taking Science to School (National Academy of Sciences, 2007) –Learning progressions describe the complicated ways in which students reason about content over broad periods of time. –Incorporating how students reason about topics over time will improve the quality of ecological education, helping us establish curricula and standards that lead to ecological literacy

Levels of Achievement in Carbon Learning Progression We use seven levels of achievement to map out students’ progress (See Handout Tables 2, 4, 5): Levels 1-3: Stories about events. Students make sense of the world by telling stories about events that they see and hear, with little awareness of systems or hidden mechanisms Level 4: School science narratives. Students include atoms, molecules, and large-scale systems in their stories, but they cannot use scientific models and principles to “complete the socio- ecological loop” Levels 5-7: Model-based reasoning about socio-ecological systems. Students use scientific models and principles to complete the loop, connecting human social and economic systems and issues with environmental systems and issues.

Carbon Level 5 Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle Combustion, cellular respiration Photosynthesis Matter: CO 2 & H 2 OMatter: Organic matter & O 2 Biosynthesis, digestion, food webs, fossil fuel formation Movement of CO 2, H 2 O, and minerals Energy: Sunlight Energy: Chemical potential energy Energy: Work & heat

Carbon Percentage of high school students giving Level 5 responses: Approximately 2-5%

Carbon What Makes Level 5 Reasoning Hard? Connecting scales –Different macroscopic events are explained by common atomic-molecular processes –Different macroscopic events are connected in large- scale systems Basic chemistry –Atoms of gases can be rearranged into solid and liquid molecules –Chemical identities of substances and classes of substances Understanding the power of models –One model can generate stories of many different events

Carbon Level 3 Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle Animals Plants Carbon dioxide Oxygen Decay Plants NutrientsFood chains Sunlight The oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle Energy sources for plants: sunlight, nutrients, water Energy sources for animals: food, water Decomposers don’t need energy

Carbon Some Characteristics of Level 3 Reasoning Focus on macroscopic events and systems Separate stories about different events Stories of gases are separate from stories of solids and liquids Energy as conditions or materials needed to make something happen

Trends From Younger to Older Students: Characteristics of Accounts of Phenomena Account ElementLower Anchor (Elementary Items)Upper Anchor (High School Items) Materials (Tracing matter) Objects, plants, animals, “ephemera” (gases, conditions) as separate entities Substances with chemical identities, mixtures. Matter, energy, conditions clearly separated. Agents (Tracing energy) Needs, actors, conditions, causesTransformation and degradation of energy Mechanisms (Reductionist models in time or scale) Time: Stories with few steps. “Things happen.” Scale: Essentialistic or vitalistic views: Things do what they do because that’s their nature. Models: Mechanical or representational models Time: multi-step processes Scale: Processes in subsystems organized by scientific hierarchy (See Table 1 on handout) Models: Hierarchy of systems Contexts or settings (Contextual models) Time: Some ideas about necessary conditions or preceding/succeeding events. Scale: Few comments about larger systems or connected events in other places. Models: Qualities of stories (see Egan) Time: Change over time due to imbalances among processes, feedback loops Scale: Large-scale systems and processes that include macroscopic systems and processes. Models: Large-scale systems, reservoirs and fluxes

Overall Conclusions Very few American high school students do better than Level 4 when they try to explain basic processes in environmental systems, such as watersheds, invasive species, plant growth, combustion, and decay. This leaves them poorly prepared to see connections among the actions we take, the environmental system services we depend on, and our collective future. Website:

Thank You Major Contributors Lindsey Mohan, Chris Wilson, Beth Covitt, Kristin Gunckel, Blakely Tsurusaki, Hui Jin, Jing Chen, Hasan Abdel-Kareem, Rebecca Dudek, Josephine Zesaguli, Hsin-Yuan Chen, Brook Wilke, Ed Smith, Jim Gallagher, and Edna Tan at Michigan State University Mark Wilson, Karen Draney, Jinnie Choi, and Yong-Sang Lee at the University of California, Berkeley. National Science Foundation for funding the Environmental Literacy Project, LTER and the GK-12 Program Website:

Extra slides

Where we are now… Only a few students can explain basic processes in environmental systems, leaving them poorly prepared to see connections among the actions we take, the environmental system services we depend on, and our collective future.

Oxidation of Organic Carbon Engineered Systems What happens to a match when it burns? What happened to the gasoline when a car is empty? How could using gasoline affect global warming? What make materials energy-rich? Level of Achievement % of Student Answers

Citizenship Question: You go through the lunch line at school and see that they are serving hamburgers. Where did the hamburgers come from? The ground beef in the hamburger patties wasn’t always ground beef. It wasn’t even always beef. Fill in the table with your ideas about what it was and where it came from before it came to the school cafeteria. Trace the beef back as you can. What was it? Where did it come from? Ground beef in hamburger in the school cafeteria Before that…

Ranking Systems Put the following items in the boxes below, going from the smallest to the largest. Population, Gene, Species, DNA, Ecosystem, Dog, Chromosome

Environmental Literacy “Loop” Diagram Curriculum with Focus on Environmental Literacy Students will be Consumers, Voters, Workers, Volunteers, Advocates & Learners

Environmental Literacy Topics Biodiversity: foods and land for living, settlement and management for production, processes that create, sustain, and reduce biodiversity Carbon: foods and fuels, global climate change, processes that produce, transform, and oxidize organic carbon Water: fresh water, water management, processes that move and distribute water, processes that alter water composition (data not included in presentation) Citizenship: Practices of making decisions about human actions that use environmental system services or have environmental impact.

Biological Diversity and Change over Time in Environmental Systems Processes within Populations Processes within Communities Processes that create biodiversity Mutation, sexual recombination Colonization by new species Processes that sustain biodiversity Life cycles, reproduction. Relationships between populations. Processes that reduce biodiversity Natural selection, human selection Natural succession Human management.

Data on student reasoning about structure/function, e.g.... and change over time, e.g. Pesticide resistance (Natural selection at the intersection between natural and human systems).

Genetic Variation Very few students ever mentioned more than one possible source of phenotypic variation. Genetic variation was only common as an answer when environmental variation could be ruled out.

Genetic Variation 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. LevelChange over Time Level 5 Model-based accounts across scales 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. Level 4 School science narratives of systems As the bugs live in and around these pesticides, their immunity to it becomes stronger, and this immunity becomes stronger as they pass them down to their young in genes. Level 2 Narrative descriptions of systems at the macroscopic scale 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.

Pesticide Resistance Level of Achievement % of Student Answers