We have entered the Anthropocene, an age when the actions of seven billion humans have increasing influence on the Earth. The High-Adventure Science: Earth Systems and Sustainability project is developing modules for middle school and high school students in Earth and Space Science classes, testing the hypothesis that students who use computational models, analyze real-world data, and engage in building scientific reasoning and argumentation skills are better able to understand Earth science core ideas and how humans impact Earth's systems. The Concord Consortium in partnership with the University of California Santa Cruz and the National Geographic Society are co-developing these modules, conducting targeted research on how the modules enhance students' higher order thinking skills and understanding of human-Earth interactions, and broadly disseminating these materials via far-reaching education networks.

The High-Adventure Science: Earth Systems and Sustainability project is creating online, middle and high school curriculum modules that feature computational models and cover five topics: climate change, fresh water availability, fossil fuel utilization, resource sustainability, and land use management. At the same time, the project team is conducting design studies to look at how specific features, prompts, argumentation and evaluation tools built into the modules affect student understanding of core Earth science concepts. The design studies promote rapid, iterative module development and help to identify features that support student learning, as well as scientific reasoning, scientific argumentation with uncertainty, systems thinking, and model-based experimentation skills. For each module, pre- and posttest data, embedded assessments, student surveys, classroom observations, teacher interviews and surveys, provide important information to rapidly improve module features, content, and usability. The final, high-quality, project materials are being made available to a national audience through the National Geographic Society as well as through the High-Adventure Science: Earth Systems and Sustainability website hosted at the Concord Consortium.

It is essential that students graduate from high school with a solid understanding of the scientific concepts that help explain how humans impact Earth systems, and conversely, how Earth processes impact humans. The High-Adventure Science: Earth Systems and Sustainability project provides a unique, research-based approach to conveying to students core Earth science content, crosscutting concepts, and fundamental practices of science. The resulting online curriculum modules and teacher guides provide exciting examples of next generation Earth science teaching and learning materials, and the research findings provide new insights on how students learn core science concepts and gain critical scientific skills.

Ocean Tracks: Investigating Marine Migrations in a Changing Ocean, a collaboration between Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), and Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, is developing a unique model of how to enable high school students to use authentic scientific data via an interactive Web-interface. Ocean Tracks is developing and classroom testing powerful Web-based visualization and analysis tools derived from state-of-the-art knowledge about how to support student inquiry with data. An interactive website provides access to near-real-time and archival data from electronically tagged marine animals, drifting buoys, and Earth-orbiting satellites collected through the Global Tagging of Pelagic Predators, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Adopt-a-Drifter, and MY NASA DATA programs. Powerful Web-based visualization and analysis tools, derived from state-of-the-art knowledge about how to support student inquiry with data, allow students to learn and apply core concepts in ecology, biology, environmental science, earth science, oceanography, and climate science.

Concurrently, agencies such as the NSF, NOAA, and NASA are making significant investments in sophisticated cyberinfrastructures (CI) that will make available a treasure trove of scientific data via the Internet to scientists and educators; there is tremendous potential for this data to transform teaching and learning by engaging students in authentic scientific work. However, modifying expert-data interfaces for use by students and supporting students as they engage in scientific inquiry with data are significant challenges. There is an urgent need for model programs such as Ocean Tracks that instantiate the best knowledge of experienced educators and education researchers, practicing scientists, and technology experts. Ocean Tracks harnesses the promise of emerging CI to engage high school students in the use of data visualization tools to study the movement patterns and habitat usage of marine animals (e.g., sharks, tunas, turtles, seals, and seabirds) in relation to oceanographic variables (e.g., sea surface temperature, chlorophyll, and current speed and direction). The knowledge gained from Ocean Tracks will have broad impact by serving as a model for designing and implementing projects in which students, teachers, and scientists collaborate to conduct scientific research, even in classrooms that are far from the ocean and scientists' laboratories.

Ocean Tracks: Investigating Marine Migrations in a Changing Ocean, a collaboration between Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), and Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, is developing a unique model of how to enable high school students to use authentic scientific data via an interactive Web-interface. Ocean Tracks is developing and classroom testing powerful Web-based visualization and analysis tools derived from state-of-the-art knowledge about how to support student inquiry with data. An interactive website provides access to near-real-time and archival data from electronically tagged marine animals, drifting buoys, and Earth-orbiting satellites collected through the Global Tagging of Pelagic Predators, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Adopt-a-Drifter, and MY NASA DATA programs. Powerful Web-based visualization and analysis tools, derived from state-of-the-art knowledge about how to support student inquiry with data, allow students to learn and apply core concepts in ecology, biology, environmental science, earth science, oceanography, and climate science.

Concurrently, agencies such as the NSF, NOAA, and NASA are making significant investments in sophisticated cyberinfrastructures (CI) that will make available a treasure trove of scientific data via the Internet to scientists and educators; there is tremendous potential for this data to transform teaching and learning by engaging students in authentic scientific work. However, modifying expert-data interfaces for use by students and supporting students as they engage in scientific inquiry with data are significant challenges. There is an urgent need for model programs such as Ocean Tracks that instantiate the best knowledge of experienced educators and education researchers, practicing scientists, and technology experts. Ocean Tracks harnesses the promise of emerging CI to engage high school students in the use of data visualization tools to study the movement patterns and habitat usage of marine animals (e.g., sharks, tunas, turtles, seals, and seabirds) in relation to oceanographic variables (e.g., sea surface temperature, chlorophyll, and current speed and direction). The knowledge gained from Ocean Tracks will have broad impact by serving as a model for designing and implementing projects in which students, teachers, and scientists collaborate to conduct scientific research, even in classrooms that are far from the ocean and scientists' laboratories.

This Exploratory Project is developing two prototype innovative instructional modules for grades 9-12 modules, and testing them extensively for useability and impact. These modules will emphasize the role of mathematics and computer science in planning for sustainability. The primary hypotheses is that short (roughly one week) interdisciplinary modules can positively impact students' in the following ways:

- attitudes toward mathematics and computer science by immersion in sustainability topics of personal relevance;

- facility with cross-cutting skills in mathematical and computational methods;

- awareness of interdisciplinary issues in sustainability;

- empowerment to engage in sustainability discourse and exercise responsible citizenship;

- learning of the STEM practices and modes of inquiry necessary to become the next generation of interdisciplinary problem solvers;

- awareness of STEM educational opportunities and career paths related to sustainable living.

The project is conducted by Rutgers Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP), Colorado State University (CSU), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and at multiple schools.

Topics for the initial two modules will be chosen by a high level Advisory Board from the following: Passive Solar Building Design, Weather Generators, Hydrologic Cycles, Invasive Species and Percolation, and Uncertainties with Projections in Climate Models. Each module will contain a description of career opportunities and related jobs, and highlight a person in one such job. Module writer teams of 2-3 writers consisting of at least one content expert and one pedagogical expert and/or experienced teacher will write the two modules in the first year; they will be tested with high school students in a summer prototyping workshop held at The Groton School in the summer between the two years of the project; revised during that summer; field tested in diverse high schools during the fall of the second year; revised again during the spring; and prepared for publication at the end of the two years.

TERC, in collaboration with the Boston Arts Academy is developing an innovative studio learning environment for students in grades 7-9. This pilot project focuses on object-centered inquiry about water and water-related problems of local and global significance. The project promotes student learning through multi-faceted studies involving hydrology, history, health, digital media, web-based artifact generation, real world data collection, interactions with scientists and artists, and community exhibitions of student work. The primary goal of the Educating the Imagination project is to develop a more effective model for engaging and improving the science learning and achievement of underrepresented urban students.

Studio learning intentionally integrates experimentation with practices of analysis, interpretation, critique of work and conceptual development. During a four week summer studio program, students, guided by teachers and scientists, will produce research-based projects about water and create plans to exhibit their work in the Boston area during the school year. Students will be assessed along multiple dimensions ranging from the depth of their understanding of water science ideas, their ability to make claims and arguments, their use of multiple tools and modes of representation, and the quality of their presentations. Over a two year period researchers will collect data on the studio design model and student learning to determine which aspects of the studio are effective in engaging students in object-oriented inquiry related to important water science ideas and problems.

Educating the Imagination will provide valuable insights about the studio design model and its application to promote science learning. In addition, this project directly addresses the problem of inequality in opportunities to learn and participate in science by developing and testing an innovative, non-traditional learning model with underrepresented urban students. The results of this project could significantly change how we think about and structure STEM learning environments in urban settings.

The Lynch School of Education and the Urban Ecology Institute at Boston College are partnering with the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) to develop, test, evaluate and disseminate a year-long set of urban ecology course materials for use in high school-level capstone science courses. The standards-based materials emphasize locally-relevant field studies and incorporate principles of Universal Design for Learning and Educative Curriculum. Other features include (1) an on-line resource center that links to professional development resources, (2) a student-written urban environment newspaper called "Green Times," and (3) a writing support toolkit. Evaluation and research studies focus on measuring effectiveness of the materials in promoting content understanding, self-efficacy in science and inquiry abilities of students in urban high schools, particularly those from underrepresented groups.

(Note: This project was originally awarded to the Lead Organization, Boston University under the Award #0628143 and for the Funding Period: Sun, 10/01/2006 - Thu, 09/30/2010. Due to a change in institution by the PI of the project, a new award was issued: Award # 1110524)

This workshop developed a new, comprehensive, research-based framework for assessing environmental literacy. By bringing together, for the first time, experts in research, assessment, and evaluation from the fields of science education, environmental education, and related social science fields, this project accessed and built its work on the literature and the insights of many disciplines. The North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) worked with the leaders of the only two large-scale assessments of environmental literacy used in the U.S. to date (Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] and the National Environmental Literacy Assessment [NELA]) to conduct the workshop. The project leaders analyzed PISA and NELA and used a multi-disciplinary search and review of the literature to prepare a draft framework. At the workshop and thereafter, a diverse array of invited experts critiqued that draft and provided suggestions for revision. Then, the leaders/organizers produced a final Environmental Literacy Framework and disseminated it both electronically and at a nationally advertised event to a wide audience of assessment specialists, funding and policy-making agencies, and organizations working to develop assessments and achieve environmental literacy. Many institutions and agencies have noted the need to create an environmentally literate population, and government and private entities are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in projects aimed at enhancing environmental literacy. Given the scope and scale of these investments and the interest in this arena on the part of federal agencies, professional organizations, and corporations, assessments for gauging our progress in transforming our preK-12 education system to achieve that end are needed. The new Framework for assessing environmental literacy provides a foundation for measuring the extent to which we are enabling all learners to acquire the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and behaviors vital for competently making decisions about local, regional, national and global issues.

Having a geographically literate population will be critical to the economic stability, physical security, and environmental sustainability of the United States in the 21st century. Yet the U.S. still lags far behind the other developed nations in education in the geographical sciences. Recognizing the risk that geographic illiteracy poses for our country, the National Geographic Society (NGS), in collaboration with the Association of American Geographers, American Geographical Society, and National Council for Geographic Education, proposes to engage in a set of research synthesis and dissemination activities that will provide road maps for the design of assessment, professional development, instructional materials, public information, and educational research for the next decade. The work will be done by a broad range of experts from K-12 institutions as well as the geographical science and educational research communities

Building on a 25 year collaboration, NGS and its partners propose to engage in a community-wide effort to synthesize the literature from a broad range of fields and to use the findings to create frameworks that will guide the planning, implementation, and scale-up of efforts to improve geographic education over the next decade. The result of this effort will be a set of publicly reviewed, consensus reports that will guide the collaborative efforts of the project partners and the larger geographic education community, as well as broaden awareness of the increasingly significant and acute need for geographic literacy and education in the geographical sciences in our country.

This project will create three in-depth "roadmap" reports targeted at practitioners, takeholders, and policymakers. Developed by expert committees, these three reports will be on:

- Assessment frameworks for systematic monitoring and continuous improvement of geographic education programs.

- Professional development for teachers and instructional materials to support large-scale educational improvement across diverse contexts.

- Educational research agenda to set priorities and identify appropriate methodologies for research that will improve geographic education into the future.

These three reports will be summarized in an executive summary written for a broad audience of educators, policymakers, and concerned citizens.

In addition to these consensus reports, the project will also conduct research on public understanding of the nature and importance of geographic literacy, with particular attention to the key audiences of educators, policymakers, and citizens. In addition to shaping the project's reports, this research will inform the broader communications and dissemination efforts of this project and its partners.

STORE is developing and piloting classroom uses of GIS-based interactive data files displaying climatological, topographical, and biological data about an especially ecologically and topographically diverse section of mid-California and a section of western New York State, plus projected climate change outcomes in 2050 and 2099 from an IPCC climate change model. Both areas contain weather stations. The participating students and teachers live in those areas, hence the place-based focus of the project.

To help teachers make curricular decisions about how to use these data with their students, the project has, with input from six design partner teachers, produced a curriculum module exemplar consisting of six lessons. The lessons start with basic meteorological concepts about the relationship between weather systems and topography, then focus on recent climatological and land cover data. The last two lessons focus on IPCC-sanctioned climate change projections in relation to possible fates of different regional species. Technology light versions of these lessons send students directly to map layers displaying the data for scientific analysis. Technology-heavy versions address the additional goal of building students' capacities to manipulate features of geographic information systems (GIS). Hence, the technology-heavy versions require use of the ARC GIS Explorer Desktop software, whereas the technology light versions are available in both the ARC software and in Google Earth. Google Earth makes possible some student interactivity such as drawing transects and studying elevation profiles, but does not support more advanced use of geographic information system technology such as queries of data-containing shape files or customization of basemaps and data representational symbology.

Answer keys are provided for each lesson. Teachers have in addition access to geospatial data files that display some storm systems that moved over California in the winter of 2010-2001 so that students can study relationships between actual data about storm behavior and relationship to topography and the climatological data which displays those relationships in a summary manner. This provides the student the opportunity to explore differences between weather and climate.

To increase the likelihood of successful classroom implementation and impact on student learning, the professional development process provides the conditions for teachers to make good adaptability decisions for successful follow-through. Teachers can implement the six lessons or adapt them or design their own from scratch. The project requires that they choose from these options, explain on content representation forms their rationales for those decisions, and provide assessment information about student learning outcomes from their implementations. The project provides the teachers with assessment items that are aligned to each of the six lessons, plus some items that test how well the students can interpret the STORE GIS data layers.

All of this work is driven by the hypothesis that science teachers are more likely to use geospatial information technology in their classrooms when provided with the types of resources that they are provided in this project. In summary, these resources include:

1.     tutorials about how to use the two GIS applications

2.     sufficiently adaptive geospatial data available in free easily transportable software applications

3.     lessons that they can implement as is, adapt, or discard if they want to make up their own (as long as they use the data)

4.     supportive resources to build their content knowledge (such as overview documents about their states' climates and information about the characteristics of each data layer and each data set available to them).

 

The growth and evolution of the teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge is being tracked through interviews, face-to-face group meetings, and classroom observations. Also being tracked is the extent to which the teachers and students can master the technology applications quickly and on their own without workshops, and how well teachers provide feedback to the students and assess their learning outcomes when implementing STORE lessons. As the project moves into its third and final year, we will be studying outcomes from the first classroom implementation year (i.e. year two of the project) and determining to what extent the professional development strategies need to be revised in relation to how the teachers are responding to the project resources and forms of professional support. In the end, the project will contribute to the knowledge base about what professional development strategies are appropriate for getting teachers to use these types of resources, what decisions teachers make about how to use the resources for different courses and student groups they teach, and what are the outcomes of those uses in terms of curricular material, instructional strategies, and student learning.

This exploratory project, led by faculty at the University of Montana, Michigan State University, and the University of Arizona, collaborating with teachers from the Missoula, MT schools, builds on current learning progression research to study the effects of teaching Tools for Reasoning on development of middle school students' capacities to understand the Earth's hydrologic systems. The project applies a design-based research approach using iterative cycles of Tool design/revision, teacher workshops, and small-scale pilot tests of Tools through classroom experiments with teachers and students in Montana and Arizona.

The central research question being addressed is: How can learning progression-based Reasoning Tools support students in using models and representations to engage in principled reasoning about hydrologic systems? This question will be answered by analysis of data from assessments of student learning, student clinical interviews, teacher assessments, classroom observations, and teacher focus groups.

The Reasoning Tools project will contribute insight into the challenge of developing students' environmental science literacy and the reasoning skills needed to make informed citizenship decisions about 21st century water issues. Project outcomes will include materials for teaching middle school students to reason about hydrologic systems, theoretical and practical insights into the effects of teaching Tools for Reasoning, strategies for supporting students and teachers in use of the Tools, and refinements of a water systems learning progression framework.