Marine Education: A Graduate Coursefor Teachers

Claudia T. MelearEast Carolina University

Science education departments in colleges anduniversities generally do not have separate courses formarine education. In addition, marine education inelementary science methods courses is among thetopics least emphasized (Barrow, 1992). Colleges anduniversities have courses in marine science, but thesecourses focus upon science content, rather than onmarine education for teachers.

Science teachers take many ofthe marine scienceofferings; they generally design their own adaptationsof the materials for their prccollege science classes.Sometimes those adaptations are watered down ver-sions of the content they themselves were taught intheir college science classes.

Science teachers want to teach students scientifi-cally relevant material. In determining relevance, theyare guidedby the goals established inProject Synthesis(ERIC, 1981; Trowbridge & Bybee. 1990). ProjectSynthesis data came from a number of nationwidestudies which sought to determine national goals forgeneral education in science at all precollege levels.One ofthese goals for science teaching is to teach howscience relevance and societal issues overlap whenknowledge of water resources is concerned.

Marine educators rely on guidance from the Na-tional Science Teachers Association; both regularlyarticulate the goals established by Project Synthesisand promote them. These four goals are to teachstudents personal needs, societal issues, scientificknowledge, and career awareness in science.Trowbridge & Bybee (1990) added scientific methodsas a fifth goal.

Societal needs such as conservation and preserva-tion of water resources are high on the list of environ-mental concerns. College students frequently are un-sure about these concerns for local, regional, andnational water resources. Few college students arcactivists for environmental groups, although manyhave interests in preserving natural resources of allkinds. Graduate education majors, however, are at aprimed state ofinterest in learning about environmen-tal concerns: They have enough science background tofully understand what the science implications are ifresources are notmanaged properly, and they have thecommitment to leam how to teach others.

Aims, Topics and Goals

1. To determine aquatic topics ofinterest to themwhich overlap the North Carolina state curriculumguide topics.

2. To find and select, ordesign appropriate labo-ratory activities orexperiments whichhelp teach thosetopics.

3. Tobecome familiarwiththeliteratureinmarineeducation.

4. To increase opportunities for K-12 students toleam about marine settings.

5. To increase their knowledge of local aquaticissues and what resources arc available to them fortheir teaching.

6. To identify local aquatic field trip sites andplan a future trip.

7. To improve their motivation for developinginstructional skills for teaching a multicultural audi-ence about the marine environment.

Diversity

Item seven reflects new guidelines for selectingrevelant science material. In 1991, the NSTA pub-lished a policy statement on multicultural education.Cultural diversity issues include teaching both interestand need in scienceto various multicultural groups andteaching them in culturally appropriate ways. Over50% of students in eastern North Carolina publicschools are African-American.

Environmental groups are becoming aware ofboth the need to recruit diversity among theirmember-ships, as well as focusing on concerns of interests tothose groups. Environmental topics can vary accord-ing to different groups; for example, environmentalracism refers, in part, to placing toxic dumps in ethni-cally poor neighborhoods. This topic is introduced inthe course byway ofthe impact on water resources. Ingeneral, topics of interest in marine education to mi-norities are basically the same as for the majority.Teaching in culturally appropriate ways, however, is anew way of looking at marine education pedagogy.The NSTA policy statement suggests using a learningstyle approach for differences due to culture (Melear,

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In Press). Therefore, in this course, each student’slearning style was measured and one of the requiredtexts describedhowto uselearning style informationtodesign instruction.

Another positive aspect of introducing learningstyle in an environmental education type course, suchas marine education, is that teachers become aware ofthe differences in communication and learning stylesofgroups with divergent interests in the environment.For example, persons in business, industry, govern-ment, environmental organizations, and in educationcan be characterized, in part, by their communication/learning style types (Hirsh & Kummerow, 1989). Alltypes are found in all professions; yet, there is evidencethat professions seem to attract similar types, based onlearning, communication, and personal style. Learn-ing diversity is helpful for teachers to know about.whetherfordirectteaching ofstudents intheclassroomorforteaching aboutways to communicate with indus-try and government officials about the environment.

Organization and Instruction

A variety of learning opportunities was providedfor students. Some of them arc listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Learning Opportunities for Marine Educa-tion.�Introduction to marine education literature�AquaticWILD�Literature reviews of Current, the journal of

marine education�Guest Speakers: Ms. Lena Ritter, North Carolina

Coastal Federation(NCCF); Dr. Lundie Spence.North Carolina Sea Grant

�Learning style, multicultural education�How to plan field trips�Preparation ofmarine labs from student-chosen texts�Attendance atMAMEA 14th Annual meeting at Kill

Devil Hills. N.C.�Research paper�Computers in Marine Education�Creative projects�Videos and films: EndangeredEstuaries,The Beachesare Moving, The Beaches, A River of Sand, TroubledWaters, Beach Sweep in North Carolina

The class meets for thrce hours during each of 15weeklysessions duringthe semester.Theweeklysched-ule is listed in Table 2. Fourofthe sessions arc faculty-led seminars. Two sessions arc led by guest speakers.Ms. Ritter told of the advocacy work she does for the

North Carolina Coastal Federation (NCCF). She ex-plained field trip excursions for students to the NCCFlocation. Dr. Spence described and led laboratoriesfrom Sea Lab which she coauthorcd.

Table 2. Semester Weekly Schedule.

1. Overview of the course and texts. Administerlearning style instrument.

2. Identify science topics in texts currently in use bystudents that arc likely places of infusion ofmarine topics and laboratory activities. Overview ofmarine education literature with particular focuson Section I of the required text. Oceanographyfor Landlocked Classrooms (OLC). Instructionsfor literature reviews of Current articles. Discussion of "Raising Sea-Consciousness in a Landlocked Library," by Cowal in OLC.

3. & 4. Project AquaticWILD.5. Student presentations of Current literature reviews;

class discussion of issues raised by the reviews.Explanation oflearning style and return results tostudents.

6. & 7. Guest speakers.8. & 9. Students choose, set-up, and teach laboratories

from course texts.10. Marine and Aquatic Videos and films.11. Computer software evaluations.12. & 13. Time off is given for attending MAMEA.14. & 15. Studentled presentations ofcreativeprojects.

Texts

Texts and sample readings forthe course are listedin the Appendix. Two texts were required; Oceanog-raphy for Landlocked Classrooms was the primarytext. Spence’sarticle<*Marinescienceprog^ams acrossthe nation" gives the students an overview of theadditionalmaterials chosenforthe course. Muchofthematerial Spence lists was chosen as course resourcesbecause it was developed in North Carolina. BecauseNorth Carolina has so many marine curricula, I madethem availableinthe studentbookstore: students couldperuse them and make their own selections accordingto their interests and student population grade needs.Only one other text was required: People Types andTiger Stripes, a primer on designing instruction usinglearning style as measured by the Myers-Briggs TypeIndicator (Myers, 1980). Thepastten years ofCurrent,the journal of marine education, were available onreserve in the library for student use for literaturereviews, research papers, and creative projects.

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Grading and Evaluation

A student’s course grade is determined by severalperformance-based assessments:1. Review articles in Current, oral and written. 10%.2. Instructional lab(s) chosen from course texts, in

eluding preparing all materials, facilitating instructions, and cleaning up. 20%.

3. Research paper on marine education topic, orattendance at MAMEA 14th annual conferencefor at least one full day, 20%.

4. Two computer software evaluations. 5%5. Creative project, 25%.6. Final exam, 20%.

MAMEA and Field Trip

The first time the course was taught students weregiven a choice ofeithercompleting a research paperorattending the 14th Annual Mid-Atlantic Marine Edu-cators Association meeting at Manteo and Kill DevilHills, North Carolina. Six ofseven students were ableto attend; some students stayed for the entire meeting.None of the six students had ever attended a marineeducators meeting before. TheMAMEAmeeting waslocated at an ocean front motel. Some students partici-pated in a wave dynamics and sand analysis field trip.Others visited a maritime forest.

North Carolina state paries have recently devel-oped curricula unique to their sites. The instructor hasjust attended a teacher-training workshop at Ham-mocks Beach State Park on Bear Island. The curricu-lum "Turtle Treks," describing nesting habits of log-gerhead sea turtles, was introduced. Future field tripswill be to a state park and/or the National Oceano-graphic AtmosphericAssociationRachelCarsonWild-life Sanctuary in Beaufort, North Carolina.

Computers in Marine Education

Oneclassperiod is devotedtoevaluationofaquaticsoftware. The evaluation instrument in Trowbridge &Bybee (1990) helped students evaluate software forcontent, salience, and effective pedagogy.

Creative Projects

Teachers made creative projects, many of whichwere working models, to accompany their instruc-tional units. Examples of creative projects (detailsavailable from author) weretwowoodenwhalepuzzles,accompanying aunitofcetaceans; papiermachemodel

ofthe inside and outside ofa blue crab, which accom-panied a lesson on the life cyle of the animal; and amobile ofa new food web. described in Sea Lab, one ofthe texts. The teacher who made the mobile usedhandmade overhead transparencies and pointed toeach element of the food web on the mobile as shetaught. The intricate, delicate, and interconnectednature ofthe food web was dynamically shown as themobile moved every time she touched it. One studenttaught a lesson on clams which culminated in servingus hot, homemade, clam chowder!

Final Exam

The final exam, chosen by the students over atraditional test, was to develop a teaching modulewhich would include a rationale, purpose and goals.content, and specific infusion sites in the North Caro-lina State Curriculum. Students also maderecommen-dations of appropriate laboratory activities from bothAquaticWILD and other required text materials, andthey suggested interdisciplinary links.

The group worked together for three hours andproduced a four page document entitled "IntegratingMarine Science into Non-Science Curricula." Themodule more than met the guidelines and was word-processed and duplicated later for all class participantsby one ofthe class members. The module includes notonly whatwas required but also suggests wheremarinescience can be included in history, English and drama.art and music, geography, governmentand economics.and mathematics. It also provides culminating activi-ties for an entire school and class.

Discussion

It is discouraging to know that among college andscience education faculty ofelementary science meth-ods courses, marine education is amongoneofthe leastemphasized topics (Barrow, 1992). However, it isencouraging to know that societal issues, such as waterpollution, are among those emphasized by the NSTA(ERIC, 1981). The course described here is an attemptto revive a course in marine education whichwas in thecollege catalog but had not been taught foryears. Thecourse was well received by the students, based oncomments received by the instructor.

The most encouraging thing about the course wasthe individual creative projects and the curriculumproduced by the class as a group. Each of these areexamples ofscience teacher creativity and team effort.North Carolina, among other states, has a rich history

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of marine education; marine educators and marinecurricula abound. Here I have attempted to share withcolleagues an approach aimed at helping teachers de-velop more awareness of this rich history and of themarineeducationteachingmaterialswhich are readytouse. Ihavealso attempted to share withfellow teacherstwo goals oftheNSTAwhich can directmarine educa-tion: Teach for societal issue awareness andmulticultural diversity.

Appendix

Texts for Marine Education Required by all:Madrazo.GM, &Hounshell.P.B.(Eds.). (1990).

Oceanography for landlocked classrooms. Reston,VA: National Association of Biology Teachers.

Lawrence, G. (1986). People types and tigerstripes. Gainesville: CenterforApplicationofPsycho-logical Types.

Required: Choose twoChase, V. (1987). Living in water. Baltimore:

National Aquarium in Baltimore.Hart,K. (circa 1990). Sealab. Raleigh: UNCSea

GrantMauldin, L. & Frankenberg, D. (1978). Seawa-

ter. Raleigh: UNCSea GrantSpence. L.. & Frankenbeig, D. (1989). Coastal

geology. Raleigh: UNCSea Grant.

Optional:Spitsbergen, J.M. (1980). Seacoast life. Chapel

Hill: UNC Press.Neisen.T. (1982). Marine biology coloring book.

NewYoric: Bames& Noble.

SampleReadingsfor a Coursein MarineEducationEarley. L.S. (1990). Can wetland forestry sur-

vive? Wildlife in North Carolina, 54(12). 19-23.Peterson, C. H. (1991). Intertidal zonation of

marine invertebrates in sand and mud. AmericanScientist, 79,236-249.

Smail, J. R. (1981). What’s in the ocean? TheAmerican Biology Teacher, 43 (6). 312-316.

Storad, C. J. (1990). Chemical treasures from thesea. Arizona State University Research Magazine, 5(2). 18-21.

WileyJ.P. (1991). Foronemother, itwas anyportafter the storm. Smithsonian, 22 (1), 24-26. (Octopusreproduction)

Periodicals Which Often Have Marine ArticlesCalypso Log, The Cousteau Society Membership

Center. 930 West 21st St. Norfolk. VA 23517.GreenpeaceMagazine, 1436U Street,NW,Wash-

ington, DC 20009.The Nature Conservancy Magazine, 1815 North

Lynn St. Arlington, VA 22209.Wildlife in North Carolina, Circulation Manager,

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, 512N. Salisbury Street. Raleigh, NC 27604-1188.

References

Barrow.L. (1992).Professionalpreparation,coursecontent, and responsibilities of big eight elementaryscience methods faculty. Journal of Elementary Sci-ence Education, 4(2), 23-34.

Calkins. Jay. (1989). Port of call: Marine exten-sion center. Current, 9(2). 21-22.

Conrath,M.,&Mayer,V. (1985). Microcomput-ers inmarine and aquatic education. Current, 6 (3), 17-20.

ERIC (1981). Project Synthesis. ERIC Clearing-house for Science, Mathematics, and EnvironmentalEducation.TheOhio State University, 1200ChambersRoad, Columbus, OH43212. InformationbulletinNo.2. (Author and report number not available at time ofpublication.)

Hirsh, S., & Kummerow, J. (1989). Ufetypes.NewYoik: Wamer.

Melear, C. T. (In press). Learning styles of Afri-can American children and NSTA goals ofinstruction.Science and Children.

MyeTsJ.WO). Gifts differing. PaloAlto: Con-sulting Psychologists Press.

National Science Teachers Association. (1991).NSTA releases positionpaperonmulticultural scienceeducation. NSTA Reports. October/November. 1.

Samples. B..&Charies.C. (1989). AquaticWILD.Current, 9(3), p.30.

Stout,P. (1983). Marine literature. Current,4(3),18-19.

Trowbridge, L., & Bybee. R. (1990). Becomingasecondary schoolscienceteacher. Columbus: MerrillPublishing Company.

Note: Claudia T. Melear can be reached at EastCarolina University, Greenville, NC 27858.

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