Molly Schauffler
Assistant Research Professor, School of Earth and Climate Sciences, Climate Change Institute
University of Maine Hutchinson Center Science Program Coordinator
Faculty Member of the RiSE Center
316 Bryand Global Science Bldg.
207.581.8038
Email Molly Schauffler
Education
- Ph.D., Plant Science, University of Maine, 1998
- MS, Botany, University of Maine, 1993
- BS, Botany, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), 1978
Research
Science education, environmental monitoring, data literacy, community-based science, paleoecology
Currently I conduct education research in overlapping areas of environmental science and data literacy aspects of mathematics education. I am particularly interested in understanding how middle and high school students (and teachers) work with data (the math part) to understand how environments are changing. What do students do when given a tabular data set and a question to investigate? To what extent do they consider variability in data? How do they decide how to summarize a data set, or which measure of center to use? How do students interpret time-series data, or a scatterplot showing correlation? How can teachers incorporate real data into science teaching so that students are motivated to investigate and understand the local and global changes that are taking place around them? In addition to my work with the UMaine RiSE Center, I consult part-time with Tuva, an online platform for visualizing, analyzing and interpreting data that is designed for developing data literacy.
Highlighted Publications
Webber, H., Nelson, S. J., Weatherbee, R., Zoellick, B., Schauffler, M. (2014). The Graph Choice Chart. Science Teacher, 81(8), 37-43.
