The City College of New York and the American Museum of Natural History propose a three-year research and development project to refine and test case study units based on existing museum-developed scientific content on contemporary issues in ecology for students underserved in their connection to nature. The resources are designed to be used by teachers of middle and high school biology, ecology, and environmental science classes. The project will produce three complete curriculum modules. They will include new scientist at work profile videos that will be disseminated online through a web interface that enables teachers to select and customize scaffolding and to address their particular students' needs in the classroom. The program will also develop in-person and online courses at CCNY and AMNH for local New York City public school teachers and teachers nationally to explore their own connection to environmental issues and ecology and to reflect upon the role of scientific inquiry in building understanding of the natural world.
Overview: The City College of New York and the American Museum of Natural History developed three case study modules that use published scientific data and museum produced media to connect the daily lives of students to human impact and ecological function. These case study modules are Highways Block Bighorn Sheep, Winter Roads Make Salty Streams, and Chesapeake Bay Food Webs. Each case study explores scientific data that demonstrate the impact of daily life on ecological function. For example, Bighorn Sheep, explores data that show how highways, built to connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas, break apart bighorn sheep habitat and lead to inbred sheep populations. Winter Roads, investigates how road salt, applied to roads to prevent car accidents in winter, runs off into freshwater streams, changing its abiotic components to make some streams nearly as salty as seawater. Finally, Chesapeake Bay, uses historic and present day food webs to explain how historic shrimp overharvesting contributes to algal blooms and dead zones in today’s bay. These modules are available for download online at www.amnh.org/explore/curriculum-collections/ecology-disrupted. Intellectual Merit: Efficacy study of modules were performed to determine the impact on student learning of ecological function and human impact of using these modules as compared to students using their regular human impact curriculum. Randomized controlled trials in the classrooms of 26 teachers across 16 public New York City high schools (N=2,234 students) showed that students using the Ecology Disrupted curriculum learned significantly more about human impact and ecology than students using their regular curriculum. They got 15.7% more correct items on the posttest than on the pretest, compared to just 3.3% for the control group. The data show that being exposed to the Ecology Disrupted curriculum has a positive and significant impact on student learning of both human impact and ecological function and that explicitly linking these topics is a valuable approach for improving student learning. In addition to this study, this project contributed exemplary curricular resources for student learning of ecology and human impact. These resources are freely available on the American Museum of Natural History’s website and a case study workbook is in development to be published by Pearson. Study of the teacher professional development program (N=36) showed that the Ecology Disrupted implementation positively affected teachers’ dispositions toward using authentic data and real-world media about scientific research to explain how people impact ecological function. Teachers demonstrated increased appreciation and capacity for using data and media for learning how humans disrupt ecological function. The implementation of curriculum grounded in an explicit conceptual model for linking daily life, human environmental impact and ecology helped teachers articulate those connections in ways that could enable students to understand the unintended consequences of daily life activities on specific ecological function. Broader Impacts: The focus of these modules on daily life personally connected urban New York City students to environmental issues and ecological principles. In total, over 150 teachers were trained to use the Ecology Disrupted resources through in-person professional development or through an online webinar. Most of these teachers were New York City public school teachers who then implemented the resources in their classrooms, but 45 teachers from across the United States participated in the webinar as well (AL, CA, CT, GA, IL, NC, NE, NJ, NY, PA, TX, MA, MD, MI, MO, MN, TN, VA, WI, WY). The Ecology Disrupted website was developed as a "kit of parts" to increase user accessibility. This design allows teachers to easily find and download only sections of interest. All materials are also available in modifiable formats to allow teachers to organize curricular resources to best advance their learning goals. This approach to website design was highly valued in teacher focus groups and is supported by the high page views of sought after Ecology Disrupted components (almost 6,000 page views for inbreeding and abiotic/biotic factors pages over one year period). The Ecology Disrupted website has received over 26,000 page views and over 21,000 unique page views since going live (a one year period), and overall activity is increasing over time. The upcoming Pearson case study workbook will make the Ecology Disrupted model available to advanced high school, community college, and college students. The approach has also been integrated into an ongoing environmental science course for pre and in-service teachers at the City College of New York. In total, this project supported four undergraduates, three graduate students and one post-doctoral fellow.
