PARENT SESSION
Symposium 6: Pathways to scientific teaching in ecology education
Organized by: C D'Avanzo and M Mappin
Tuesday, August 9, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 517 C, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Developing a learning progression for carbon cycling.
Anderson, Charles*,1, Mohan, Lindsey1, Sharma, Ajay1, 1 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
ABSTRACT- A learning progression is a succession of children′s performances, encompassing both knowledge and practice, that leads to understanding of the material world. We use the word succession deliberately: We see learning progressions as describing changes in children′s reasoning that are akin to ecological succession. There is no single defined sequence of events, but there are multiple pathways that connect children′s naive ideas with the powerful insights of scientific theories. We use accounts of phenomena as the unit of analysis around which the learning progression is organized. Children of all ages as well as adult scientists account for their observations of the world in a variety of ways, including stories, pictures, graphs, formulas, and formal conceptual models. Adult scientific accounts provide powerful insights into the nature of the material world and tools for predicting the likely results of our actions. Children′s accounts can help us to understand how they reason about the world. We synthesize published research and report findings from our own research on how learners account for phenomena associated with the ecological carbon cycle on a variety of scales, including (a) metabolic processes in cells, including cell growth, photosynthesis, and cellular respiration, (b) processes that are observable at a human scale including growth, death, and decay of plants and animals, metabolic processes such as eating, breathing, and digestion, and physical and chemical changes such as evaporation, convection, and burning, and (c) large-scale processes such as matter cycling and energy flow in ecosystems (including coupled human and natural systems), and changes in global carbon cycling. We have tentatively identified five properties of accounts that we expect to show successional trends: Developing a critical understanding of scientific accounts; connecting accounts of plants, animals, decomposers, and materials; connecting accounts of molecular, cellular, organismic, and environmental processes; gaining experience and precision in observations, and adding detail to accounts. Each of these trends is described and illustrated with examples of learners′ accounts.
Key words: Education, Ecological literacy, Carbon cycle