ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE LITERACY Lindsey Mohan Important Contributors: Charles W. Anderson, Blakely Tsurusaki, Kristin Gunckel, Beth Covitt, Hui Jin, Jing

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE LITERACY

Lindsey Mohan

Important Contributors: Charles W. Anderson, Blakely Tsurusaki, Kristin Gunckel, Beth Covitt, Hui Jin, Jing Chen, Hasan Abdel-Kareem, Hsin-Yuan Chen, Kennedy Onyancha, Hamin Baek, Chris Wilson, Laurel Hartley, Brooke Wilke, Edna Tan, Josephine Zesaguli, Rebecca Dudek, Ajay Sharma, In-Young Cho, John Locke, Ed Smith, and Jim Gallagher from Michigan State University, Phil Piety from University of Michigan, and Mark Wilson, Karen Draney, Yong-Sang Lee, and Jinnie Choi from University of California-Berkeley.

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Environmental Literacy Research Group

This research is supported in part by three grants from the National Science Foundation: Developing a research-based learning progression for the role of carbon in environmental systems (REC 0529636), the Center for Curriculum Materials in Science (ESI-0227557) and Long-term Ecological Research in Row-crop Agriculture (DEB 0423627. 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.

CCMSCCMS

Research Partners:

http://www.nsf.gov/

INTRODUCTION and BACKGROUND



MOTIVATION FOR OUR WORK

Science education: Critiques of standards


Need to consider changing needs for citizens’ knowledge

Need to reduce and reorganize standards/ benchmarks around “big ideas”

Need to consider advances in educational research (including learning progressions)



Science: Interdisciplinary Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems


Interdisciplinary Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems

Shift from individual disciplines (ecology, geology, atmospheric science, meteorology) to interdisciplinary fields (environmental science, earth systems science)

Shift from retrospective (reconstructing the past) to prospective (projecting the future)

Shift from focus on natural systems to coupled human and natural systems


Interdisciplinary Research on Coupled Human and Natural SystemsEnvironmental Literacy

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Socio-Ecological Systems

Interdisciplinary Research on Coupled Human and Natural SystemsEnvironmental Literacy

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Current Science Curriculum



Science: Interdisciplinary Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems

Responsible Citizenship: Increasing environmental responsibility


RESPONSIBLE CITIZENSHIP and ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE LITERACY

Environmental science literacy is the ability to Enact personal agency on environmental issues Understand and evaluate arguments among experts Reconcile actions or policies with values

Citizens need to consider environmental consequences or sustainability in concert with other democratic values: freedom, opportunity, justice

Actions and decisions in multiple roles that all citizens play: learners, consumers, voters, workers, volunteers, and advocates


Making Sense of Science in Popular Media and Policy Reports

Example: The IPCC report for Policymakers“For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is

projected for a range of emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all GHGs [greenhouse gases] and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. Afterwards, temperature projections increasingly depend on specific emission scenarios. {3.2} (IPCC, 2007, p. 6)”


Making Sense of Science in Popular Media and Policy Reports

Example: The Inconvenient Truth“In Antarctica, measurements of CO2 concentrations and temperatures go back

650,000 years…The blue line below charts CO2 concentrations over this period….The gray line shows the world average temperature over the same 650,000 years…Here is an important point. If my classmate from the sixth grade were to see this—you remember, the guy who asked about South America and Africa—he would ask, “Did they ever fit together?”…The answer from scientists would be, “Yes, they do fit together”...It’s a complicated relationship, but the most important part of it is this: When there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature increases because more heat from the Sun is trapped inside.” (Gore, 2006, pp. 66-7)


Making Sense of Science in Popular Media and Policy Reports Environmental Literacy

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ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE LITERACY FRAMEWORK



PRACTICES for ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE LITERACY

1. Inquiry: Learning from experience Practical and scientific inquiry Developing arguments from evidence


PRACTICES for ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE LITERACY

1. Inquiry: Learning from experience Practical and scientific inquiry Developing arguments from evidence


3. Using scientific reasoning in responsible citizenship

Enacting personal agency on environmental issues Reconciling actions or policies with values

2. Scientific accounts and application Applying fundamental principles to processes in

systems Using scientific models and patterns to explain and

predict

Practice 2: Science Accounts & Application

Carbon: Processes that generate, transform and oxidize organic carbon• photosynthesis (plant growth), biosynthesis (plant and animal growth), cellular respiration (weight loss, movement, decay), combustion (burning), global climate change

Water: Processes that move and redistribute water or alter water composition• infiltration, transpiration, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, groundwater pumping, water diversions, erosion, dissolution, point & non-point source pollution, filtration, wetlands

chemistry, water treatment processes

Biodiversity: Processes that create, sustain, or reduce biodiversity• mutation, sexual recombination, colonization by new species, life cycles, reproduction, relationships among individuals & among populations with different niches, survival strategies,

natural selection, reduction of niches/habitats by human, invasive species



CARBON CYCLING

Importance of Carbon Cycling

• Human are altering global carbon cycling and atmospheric CO2 levels in unprecedented ways

• With respect to the “energy crisis” and “global warming”, we are asking citizens to make decisions (on both personal and political levels) that have profound consequences for the future of our country and the global environment

The burden on science/geography education:

• Citizens need to understand seemingly disparate events, such as how sea ice available to polar bears in the Artic is connected to processes inside leaf cells in the Amazon, and American using gasoline in their cars and plugging in air conditioners

• Making sense of processes that influence the flow of carbon within and between systems is necessary to make these connections

CARBON CYCLE LOOP DIAGRAMEnvironmental Literacy

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CARBON CYCLE FRAMEWORKEnvironmental Literacy

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CARBON CYCLE FRAMEWORKEnvironmental Literacy

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CARBON CYCLE ASSESSMENTSEnvironmental Literacy

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CARBON CYCLE ASSESSMENTSEnvironmental Literacy

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WATER CYCLING

The Importance of Water Cycling

• Freshwater is hugely important to our lifestyles, for both personal use and for consumer products

• Humans are altering the flow and distribution of freshwater

• The abundance and quality of freshwater available to people has major environmental, economic and political consequences

The burden on science/geography education:

• Students need to know where water comes from and where it goes; they need to be able to trace water, and materials found in water, through systems

• They need to know about human systems that alter water distribution and composition, and consequences of those alterations.

WATER CYCLING LOOP DIAGRAMEnvironmental Literacy

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WATER CYCLING FRAMEWORK


WATER CYCLING FRAMEWORK


WATER CYCLING ASSESSMENTS


BIODIVERSITY

The Importance of Biodiversity

• Biodiversity involves organisms living through their life cycles (growth and reproduction) within multiple relationships defined by their niches and habitats, and being subject to selection.

• Humans are altering biodiversity through domestication, land management, pesticides (e.g., agriculture), etc., making populations and communities less diverse and potentially less stable.

The burden on science education:

• School science should teach accounts of biodiversity at multiple scales: life cycles (changes in individuals over time), evolution (changes in populations over time), and succession (changes in ecosystems over time), connecting these to human activities that alter changes over time.

BIODIVERSITY LOOP DIAGRAMEnvironmental Literacy

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BIODIVERSITY FRAMEWORKEnvironmental Literacy

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BIODIVERSITY FRAMEWORKEnvironmental Literacy

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BIODIVERSITY ASSESSMENTSEnvironmental Literacy

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BIODIVERSITY ASSESSMENTSEnvironmental Literacy

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CITIZENSHIP

Importance of Citizenship

• Human make decisions in public and private roles: publicly as voters, advocates, volunteers etc, and privately as consumers, learners, workers, etc.

• In democratic societies, such as the US, citizens have the power to make choices with potentially profound consequences for local and global environments.

The burden on science/geography education:• School science can help prepare students to understand,

navigate, and make decisions within complex socio-ecological systems

• School science needs to “blur” traditional boundaries between scientific disciplines and between science and social studies (such as geography, sociology, economics, etc), so that citizenship issues are addressed alongside science content.


CITIZENSHIP

Curriculum with Focus on Environmental Literacy

Students will be Consumers, Voters, Workers, Volunteers, Advocates & Learners


CITIZENSHIP

1. Who do you trust? (Reasoning about SOURCES of information) Citizens have access to multiple sources of information, making different and sometimes contradictory claims. How do students evaluate the credibility of different sources.

2. What’s the evidence? (Reasoning about ARGUMENTS or positions and supporting evidence) Some sources of information give citizens access to scientific evidence in various forms and media and arguments based on that evidence. How do students use evidence to support their arguments?

3. What should we do? (Reasoning about what course of action or POSITION to take) Citizens have opportunities to explore different alternatives and to choose or identify their own course of action or position. How do they make sense of the different positions and possible consequences? How do they assess the desirability of different positions?


CITIZENSHIP

Global Perception of WorldPerceptions activate “environmental” or other schemas

Local Framing of Self and Situation

Who Am I?Perception of personal identity, roles, agency

Initial Perception/Framing of Situation

Based on cultural models (e.g., human consumption and/or environmental impact

as reasons for decisions/actions

Deciding about an Issue and/or Action

Perception leads to immediate decision without

conscious thought about environmental impacts.

Perception leads to conscious decisions process involving consideration of:

Who do I trust?What is the evidence?

Understanding current knowledge and seeking new information.

More information, such as papers about our frameworks and learning progressions, assessments, drafts of teaching materials, etc., can be found on our project website:

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


Environmental Literacy Research Group QUESTIONS?

Documents

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE LITERACY Lindsey Mohan Important Contributors: Charles W. Anderson, Blakely Tsurusaki, Kristin Gunckel, Beth Covitt, Hui Jin, Jing