Document: MON-3-28-4

Urban ecology and urban schools: A model for encouraging long-term research with school children and teachers.

ELSER, M.M.* and S.L.WILLIAMS

Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ USA. ¹

Abstract:
Encouraging students to understand their local environment and collaborating with researchers from their local university are goals of Ecology Explorers, an educational outreach program of the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Project (CAP LTER). CAP LTER is one of the two urban sites in the LTER network. Ecology Explorers capitalizes on the ability of school children to collect population data that is potentially useful to CAP LTER since all of their schoolyards are within the study site. The program, in its second year, appears to be fulfilling some of this potential. The Ecology Explorers model has several components that appear to be necessary for teachers to incorporate a "real" scientific research program into their classrooms. These components include: teacher internships with scientists in their laboratories, education liaisons who coordinate between teachers and scientists, student interaction with scientists, and technology to link students across the study site (the Phoenix metropolitan area). This model not only encourages scientific literacy, but also contributes to the long-term monitoring of our desert city. An additional benefit to the larger CAP LTER project is an increase in public awareness of urban ecological research.

Keywords: Schoolyard Ecology, Data Collection, Teacher Internships, Scientist-Student Collaboration

This abstract is being presented at: 3:30 PM in session:
Poster Session #3: Education.