Great Questions Make for Great Science Education
Pallant, A., & Pryputniewicz, S. J. (2015). Great Questions Make For Great Science Education. @Concord 19(1) 4-6.
Pallant, A., & Pryputniewicz, S. J. (2015). Great Questions Make For Great Science Education. @Concord 19(1) 4-6.
Lee, H-S, Liu, O.L, Pallant, A., Roohr, K. C., Pryputniewicz, S., & Buck, Z. (2014). Assessment of uncertainty-infused scientific argumentation. The Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 51(5), 581-605.
Though addressing sources of uncertainty is an important part of doing science, it has largely been neglected in assessing students' scientific argumentation. In this study, we initially defined a scientific argumentation construct in four structural elements consisting of claim, justification, uncertainty qualifier, and uncertainty rationale. We consulted literature to characterize and score different levels of student performances on each of these four argumentation elements. We designed a test comprised of nine scientific argumentation tasks addressing climate change, the search for life in space, and fresh water availability and administered it to 473 students from 9 high schools in the United States. After testing the local dependence and unidimensionality assumptions, we found that the uncertainty qualifier element was not aligned with the other three. After removing items related to uncertainty qualifier, we applied a Rasch analysis based on a Partial Credit Model. Results indicate that (1) claim, justification, and uncertainty rationale items form a unidimensional scale, (2) justification and uncertainty rationale items contribute the most on the unidimensional scientific argumentation scale as they cover much wider ranges of the scale than claim items, (3) average item difficulties increase in the order of claim, justification, and uncertainty rationale, (4) students' elaboration of uncertainty exhibits dual characteristics: self-assessment of their own knowledge and ability versus scientific assessment of conceptual and empirical errors embedded in investigations, and (5) students who can make warrants between theory and evidence are more likely to think about uncertainty from scientific sources than those who cannot. We identified limitations of this study in terms of science topic coverage and sample selection and made suggestions on how these limitations might have affected results and interpretations.
Overview: Join us for the second annual Earth Educators' Rendezvous. Last year's inaugural event brought together researchers and practitioners working in all aspects of undergraduate Earth education. This year we will be expanding our audience to welcome a mix of college faculty, graduate students, and K-12 teachers from all disciplines who are interested in improving their teaching about Earth. Read more
Key Dates:
For more information, visit: http://www.ncge.org/conference
DR K-12 Presenters:
Geospatially enabled learning technologies may enhance Earth science learning by placing emphasis on geographic space, visualization, scale, representation, and geospatial thinking and reasoning (GTR) skills. This study examined if and how a series of Web geographic information system investigations that the researchers developed improved urban middle-school learners’ GTR skills and their understanding of tectonics concepts.
Participants discuss and identify what coordination is needed across DR K–12 efforts to enable sustained collective impact on the issues presented by climate, global, and environmental change.
DR K–12 projects have been funded to conduct (1) activities and develop materials that are beneficial to the STEM education community (teachers and students) and (2) education research to ensure continuous improvement of these activities and materials.
Participants engage in and provide feedback on digital interactive learning experiences that use National Renewable Energy Laboratory life cycle data and help teachers understand key energy concepts. Please bring your laptop.
Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) and project partners are developing an online course for high school science teachers. The purpose of the course is to help teachers understand key energy concepts in alternative energy contexts. The course includes three interactive learning experiences (interactives) that use life cycle data from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).
Participants engage in marine data investigations using the Ocean Tracks Web interface and analysis tools, offer feedback, and discuss possible synergies with other DR K–12 programs.
Digital, large-scale scientific data have become broadly available in recent decades, and analyzing data, identifying patterns, and extracting useful information have become gateway skills to full participation in the 21st century workforce. Yet, pre-college classrooms are falling short in preparing students for this world and are missing opportunities to harness the power of Big Data to engage students in scientific learning. To address this issue, scientists, educators, and researchers at Education Development Center, Inc.
This article describes how the NSF funded High-Adventure Science: Earth’s Systems and Sustainability (HAS:ESS) project is developing online curriculum modules for middle school and high school classroom use. The curricula engage students with interactive computational models and analysis of real-world data as they build scientific reasoning and argumentation skills, focused around core ideas in Earth Science with particular emphasis on how humans affect Earth’s systems. Currently available modules focus on climate change and on fresh water availability.
To learn more, visit http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/careerprep2014/application.html.