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Project Summary What does student learning look like when beginning science students are immersed in a complex science problem using a data-rich, inquiry-based approach? The complex science problem in this case is abrupt climate change. The study will be carried out in a general education science course at Hope College. The effect of this learning approach on student beliefs about science knowledge will also be investigated. What do beginning science students believe about the role of science knowledge in their lives? What does the decision making process look like when students are asked to make decisions that require the integration of science knowledge with their own beliefs and values?
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The Ocean "Conveyor Belt"
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New directions and insights The main change in my thinking about the project concerns the role of interdisciplinarity in the course. My initial question focused on whether beginning science students could successfully integrate different disciplinary perspectives. This was disatisfactory because the problem of climate change is so richly interdisciplinary that it is difficult to neatly point to specific disciplinary contributions, and it seems unrealistic to ask beginning science students to be interdisciplinary, when they don't know what disciplinary is yet. The Carnegie residency's focus on integrative learning helped me realize that what I am really looking for is how students put the pieces together, not neccessarily how they name them as disciplines. The other shift has to do with the role of beliefs and values in this study. My project group helped me understand the importance of weaving scientists' beliefs and students' beliefs throughout the course. Scientists' beliefs affected their willingness to accept the growing body of data on abrupt climate change, and students' beliefs affect their ability to use science knowledge in decision making.
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Greenland ice core records show abrupt changes in climate (click on figure for more info)
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Next steps The next step is to prepare course materials. The course will be structured around a series of guiding questions and data analysis activities: What are your beliefs about climate and the environment? Is the climate changing?How fast can climate change?What could cause abrupt climate change?Why was the concept of abrupt climate change difficult for scientists to accept?Why do we care about drought as a kind of abrupt climate change?What factors make humans and ecosystems vulnerable to drought? How should we prepare for the future?The other "next step" is to decide what activities will be used to help students explore and articulate their beliefs about science.
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Evidence and Inquiry To document their science learning, students will prepare notebooks that contain data analysis and interpretation. I will be looking for student understanding of: how the data was collected. Who, when, where, what? Is it real time or historical? Direct measurement or proxy? What are the uncertainties in the measurements?how the data was analyzed. How do uncertaintities in measurement contribute to uncertainties in the "result?"how the data is represented. What does the representation emphasize? What does it minimize or leave out?Are there conflicting interpretations/viewpoints. Based on what evidence?A "beliefs about science knowledge" survey will be administered at the beginning and end of the course. In addition, students will read an essay or book (still to be selected) that will help them reflect on the relationship between science and their own beliefs and values. In the last part of the course, students will be asked to write about what, if anything, should be done about the problem of climate change. This will require them to integrate the science they have learned with their beliefs about the human role in the physical world. These writings will be analyzed using the model of "Reflective Judgment" developed by King and Kitchener.
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Questions and concerns I am collaborating with Professor Tricia Ferrett of Carleton College on this Carnegie project (see her snapshot). She and her students have developed most of the abrupt climate change materials we will be using. I have taught before with materials that Professor Ferrett developed, and I feel excited and confident about teaching science with this data-rich, inquiry-based approach. I am still looking for effective ways to help students reflect on and articulate their beliefs about science and their beliefs about the environment and climate. There are several available "beliefs about knowing" surveys that will serve as starting points, but I am looking for readings and essay questions that will help students better articulate why they hold the beliefs they do. Another challenge is finding ways to make the course content more local, more immediate, and less abstract to students. One possibility is to study core samples of sediments in local lakes as a model of the ice core samples we will study in the course. Another possibility is to examine the effect of climate change on the local dune ecosystem. I am working with local geologists on these possibilities.
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Looking toward June 2006 Professor Ferrett, my collaborator at Carleton, will be teaching much of the abrupt climate change course content in her first-year seminar in the fall. I will be able to visit her in October and again at the January residency, to talk face-to-face about her students' experiences. Our 2-credit general education science courses at Hope are structured as half-semester courses, so I will be teaching my course twice, back-to-back, during the winter semester. This will provide a great opportunity to make adjustments to enhance the effectiveness of the course, and it will allow me to probe the unexpected things I learn from my first group of students. The course will end in May and I will spend May and June analyzing my results. I plan to use the June 2006 residency to receive lots of critique and feedback from my project group and to work intensively with Professor Ferrett on our shared results.
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