1. Conclusions Common themes included phases of matter, feedbacks, ecosystem changes Some responses were outside of science, which may reflect responders lack of comfort with this concept (e.g. “Don’t really know this concept yet”) Different concepts of “stability” among the responses: e.g. feeling safe or stable, not running out of an unlimited resource, economic stability Patterns and Cause & Effect are integrated into all CCs (NGSS Framework). Responders often listed those as the most useful, most likely because they are the easiest to identify connections with many different scenarios Responders don’t often identify Scale, Proportion, and Quantity as the most useful but are able to come up with examples of the importance of this concept Explicit integration of ‘systems thinking’ into instruction may be most useful for developing an understanding of CCs #3-7. This metric can also be useful for identifying common misconceptions. Responders must explain their choice and often reveal their level of understanding of different concepts Future Directions A scoring rubric could be developed to assess concept understanding and different levels of understanding Reducing the number of options to select may be more useful for assessing deeper understanding (avoid selection of most obvious concepts like patterns and cause and effect) Future work will investigate whether an interdisciplinary or integrated instructional approach may improve understanding of CCs versus traditional courses that are taught within a single discipline After completing the ranking tasks, students were presented with each CC and asked to (1) describe a natural or designed phenomenon for which learners could use that specific CC to understand, and (2) provide a reason why that specific CC is highly relevant. The survey was administered to students in two different courses: EES 9: Introduction to Earth Science, emphasizing K-6 teacher preparation, application of NGSS--lower division General Education course NSCI 115: Environmental Earth & Life Science (& Sustainable Solutions) – upper division General Education requirement. Explicit integration of Crosscutting concepts as an organizing framework for the course Introduction We have been engaged in the implementation of a cross- disciplinary, 12-semester-unit (4-course) Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Concentration in Liberal Studies for future elementary teachers at California State University, Fresno. The courses in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Concentration for future elementary teachers at our institution have been purposefully designed with explicit attention to the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), employing the seven Crosscutting Concepts (CCs) as elements of a storyline that bridges content in the courses. NGSS Crosscutting Concepts 1.Patterns 2.Cause and effect: Mechanism and explanation 3.Scale, proportion, and quantity 4.Systems and system models 5.Energy and matter: Flows, cycles, and conservation 6.Structure and function 7.Stability and change Methods We constructed a series of Ranking Task Exercises (O'Kuma, T. L., Maloney, D. P., & Hieggelke, C. J. (Eds.). (2000). Ranking task exercises in physics (Vol. 26). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall), in which students are presented with a natural or designed phenomenon, and asked to select which Crosscutting Concept is MOST USEFUL in understanding the phenomenon. They also are asked for a justification for their ranking. Crosscutting Concepts Examples Results Stability & Change: Sample Responses & Explanations “Weather: weather can change or stay the same” “Homeostatic conditions within an organism: Students will be able to investigate how different organisms respond to environmental stresses to control homeostatic stability.” “Looking at seasons and deciding how and why we have seasons: It is relevant because we can use a concept that helps us identify and point out things that are stable and changing in life.” “Drought: Drought is the opposite of stability as water supplies are diminished causing a ripple effect throughout human populations and commerce…” Scale, proportion, and quantity: Sample Responses & Explanation “Measurements: This helps the students scale amounts and do math.” “The globe: This CC is relevant to the phenomenon because the Earth is actually pretty humongous. To create a globe, they needed to scale it the earth down so that we may be able to look at the entire Earth.” “The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: The specific amount of CO2 in the atmosphere helps us determine how much global temperature may rise or fall from the addition or subtraction of the greenhouse gas. If the amount in the atmosphere rises almost exponentially, humans can intervene to get the quantity of CO2 to be reduced.” “Trying to put the universe into perspective or any object that varies by considerable orders of magnitude: Students have a hard time imagining what very large or very small object look like in comparison to the objects they observe everyday. INTRODUCTION RESULTS CONCLUSIONS DISCUSSION AND Frederick L. Nelson & Christian Wandeler Department of Curriculum, Instruction, Research, and Technology Mara Brady Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences California State University, Fresno Connecting Learning Experiences for Future Teachers: Assessing and Applying Knowledge of Crosscutting Concepts that Bridge Disciplinary Boundaries Association of American Colleges and Universities Network for Academic Renewal Transforming STEM Higher Education Atlanta, Georgia November 7, 2014 Curriculum in the Environmental Earth & Life Science course was designed explicitly to provide learners with a framework for making connections across content topics. Context of the Study The CCs bridge the various science disciplines and provide learners with a framework for making connections across content (Schweingruber, H., Keller, T., & Quinn, H. (Eds.). (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Washington, DC: National Academies Press). METHODS The course is taken by undergraduate students interested in completing the post-baccalaureate credential program to become an elementary teacher in California. Ten different phenomena were presented in the first administration of the survey. “I picked pattern because there is a relationship of some kind happening in this picture. Why are the mushrooms only arraigned in a circle and not any other shapes or sporadically?” “Structure and function is the way in which an object or living thing is shaped and its substructure determine many of its properties and functions. “ Ranking Tasks Results Responses were received from 57 students. Some students selected more than one CC as MOST USEFUL. This section contains responses to the ranking tasks. RESULTS Students in the upper division course, which has an explicit interdisciplinary focus, were more likely to select the more complex CCs, such as Stability and Change.