This proposal focuses on teaching and learning concerning an important issue: global warming and climate change. The project seeks to develop a model of how middle school students learn about these complex issues, and a model of ?teaching learning of student learning.? The project has four facets: (a) Collection of baseline data on student understanding of global warming and related concepts in Grades 7 and 8; use of this data to construct an initial model of student learning and an initial model of teacher understanding of student learning. (b) Collection of data on classroom instruction and assessment of student learning relative to collaborative action research plans. Emphasis will be placed on what and how the science teachers are learning with regard to establishing coherence among the topics that ground student understanding of global warming. Formative assessment by both internal and external evaluators twice during each instructional cycle will be used to inform the subsequent data collection process. (c) Analysis of student and teacher data collected during the school year during Years 1-4 and development of a model of student learning will be conducted. Analysis of collaborative action research projects and development of the goals for the subsequent cycles will also be conducted at this time. (d) Explore resources, particularly the ones developed by NSF-funded curriculum projects to support and enhance teacher knowledge and classroom instruction will be conducted.
This four-year project was a collaborative research study conducted by university-based researchers and middle school science teachers with the aim of increasing middle school students’ understanding of global warming and climate change. Fourteen teachers from rural and urban schools participated in the project. They attended academic year and summer sessions on the Purdue campus. These project teachers worked with university faculty and developed curriculum materials appropriate for their students and taught their students using these materials. A treatment-control group design was used to compare the students in project teachers’ classrooms with those in the control group teachers’ classrooms. The performance of 1632 students showed that the students in the project classrooms made a statistically significant gain in their knowledge about global warming and climate change. Some of the concepts they learned are fundamental to understanding these complex topics and previous surveys have shown that even adults have misconceptions about the underlying science. Initially middle school students had little understanding of the greenhouse effect, the difference between weather and climate, and climate change They believed that the greenhouse effect was the same as a greenhouse used to grow plants. They also thought weather and climate were the same. After conducting experiments, analyzing simulations, and examining various data, students now understand that greenhouse gases absorb and emit infra-red radiation which is then re-absorbed by the materials on the earth’s surface. And that this contributes to the warming of the earth. Students also know that weather is what happens over the short term, like day-to-day or hour-to-hour changes and climate is a long-term pattern determined from data about many changes on the Earth’s surface over decades. This is a significant improvement because these students will be less likely to draw a conclusion about climate change from one or a few-years’ data on temperature, precipitation, and other climate variables. They know that scientists track data, not only on temperature but also on drought, rainfall, snowfall, severity and frequency of storms, water surges in coastal areas, solar flares, and many other variables. Many of these students were motivated to take part in mitigation of the impacts of climate change. This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and the Co-PIs and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
