Diagnostic Testing of Science Concepts K-16

2007 ESA/SER Joint Meeting2007 ESA/SER Joint Meeting

Brook J. Wilke, Christopher D. Wilson Brook J. Wilke, Christopher D. Wilson & Charles W. (Andy) Anderson & Charles W. (Andy) Anderson

Environmental Science LiteracyEnvironmental 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?

Environmental Science LiteracyEnvironmental Science Literacy

• 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.

LTER Socio-Ecological Research

Collins et al. 2007. ISSE.

Environmental Literacy “Loop” Diagram

Environmental Literacy “Loop” Diagram

Current Science Curriculum

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.

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

We use seven levels of achievement to map out students’ progress:

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 mechanismsLevel 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.

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 successionHuman management.

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 VariationFarmers 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.

Level Change 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

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

1 2 3 4 5

Level of Achievement

% o

f S

tude

nt A

nsw

ers

Carbon

Events We Have Asked About

• Plant growth• Animal growth and weight loss• People exercising• Food chains and webs• Energy pyramids• What happens to food after you eat it.• Decay of plants, animals, people• Burning matches and candles• Automobiles using gasoline• Global Warming

Carbon

Level 5 Reasoning about the Carbon Cycle

Combustion, cellular respiration

Photosynthesis

Matter: CO2 & H2O Matter: Organic matter & O2

Biosynthesis, digestion, food webs, fossil fuel formation

Movement of CO2, H2O, and minerals

Energy: Sunlight

Energy: Chemicalpotential 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

Nutrients Food chains

SunlightThe 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

Oxidation of Organic Carbon Engineered Systems

01020304050607080

0 1 2 3 4 5

High School

Middle School

Elementary School

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

% o

f Stu

den

t An

swer

s

CitizenshipQuestion: 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…

Before that…

Before that…

Before that…

Before that…

Trends From Younger to Older Students

• Awareness of Systems and Processes: From Visible to Invisible (small- and large-scale systems, invisible mechanisms, gases)

• Precision in Measurement and Description: From Impressions to Data (trust and accuracy in measurement, scientific terms, categories, data representation)

• Nature of Accounts: From Stories and Procedures to Models Constrained by Principles (changing balance between stories and models, using principles to constrain and connect models, distinguishing models from observations and patterns)

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: http://edr1.educ.msu.edu/EnvironmentalLit/index.htm

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

•Phil Piety at the University of Michigan

•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: http://edr1.educ.msu.edu/EnvironmentalLit/index.htm