Environmental Science

Engineering design systematically identifies needs, wants, and problems and then devises solutions to address them. A central component of our work is guiding students in the engineered design of solutions to local environmental problems.

Songer, N. B. (2023). Why is engineering design important for all learners?. Open Access Government April 2023, pp.300-301. https://doi.org/10.56367/OAG-038-10193

Puttick, G., Drayton, B., & Gasca, S. (2023). Open innovation challenge to mitigate global warming. Connected Science Learning, 5(5).

The Innovate to Mitigate (I2M) project poses challenges for secondary-school students to design feasible, innovative strategies that mitigate CO2 emissions and thus global warming. Design is informed by research on problem-based learning, pedagogy for which poses demands on teachers. This paper presents preliminary evidence about how I2M teachers supported student teams to engage in science and engineering practices.

The Innovate to Mitigate (I2M) project poses challenges for secondary-school students to design feasible, innovative strategies that mitigate CO2 emissions and thus global warming. Design is informed by research on problem-based learning, pedagogy for which poses demands on teachers. This paper presents preliminary evidence about how I2M teachers supported student teams to engage in science and engineering practices.

Foregrounding climate education in formal science learning environments provides students with opportunities to develop critical climate-related knowledge and skills. However, research has shown many challenges to teaching and learning about Earth’s climate and global climate change (GCC). This longitudinal study aims to establish how secondary science teachers, over time, implement model-based climate curricula in support of students’ climate and GCC education by utilizing EzGCM. The model (EzGCM) is a data-driven, computer-based climate modeling tool use to explore global climate data.

Foregrounding climate education in formal science learning environments provides students with opportunities to develop critical climate-related knowledge and skills. However, research has shown many challenges to teaching and learning about Earth’s climate and global climate change (GCC). This longitudinal study aims to establish how secondary science teachers, over time, implement model-based climate curricula in support of students’ climate and GCC education by utilizing EzGCM. The model (EzGCM) is a data-driven, computer-based climate modeling tool use to explore global climate data.

The Innovate to Mitigate project adapts crowdsourcing to support project-based STEM education, posing design challenges for secondary-school students. Students are charged with designing feasible innovative strategies to mitigate CO2 emissions and thus global warming. The paper draws on data from 3 project teams. The paper presents evidence that a web-mediated community of practice supports STEM learning of concepts and STEM practices and examines conditions under which the environment can enable an account of microgenesis of that learning.

The global pandemic and climate change have led to unprecedented environmental, social, and economic challenges with interdisciplinary STEM foundations. Even as STEM learning has never been more important, very few pre-college programs prepare students to address these challenges by emphasizing socio-scientific issue (SSI) problem solving and the engineering design of solutions to address local phenomena.

As distinct communities of practice (COP), science education research (SER) and environmental education research (EER) have both matured a great deal in recent decades, coming to include a greater diversity of theoretical perspectives, worldviews, and researcher and participant voices. In this paper, we present a view of theoretical inclusivity that promises a rich, robust research landscape for both EER and SER through the deliberate inclusion of non-Western theories.

Humankind faces unprecedented environmental, social, and economic challenges. There is a critical need for STEM education to foster both science learning and the application of learning to problem solving. At the University of Utah, Professor Nancy Butler Songer and her collaborators have developed a suite of interdisciplinary instructional and field-based data collection resources offering elementary and secondary students the chance to create solutions for local, urban environmental issues.