Integrated Approaches in Earth Science Education II
Professor Molly Schauffler
Course Improvements
This course enhancement project focused on a more seamless integration of data literacy skills and data literacy pedagogical content knowledge into the curriculum via the development and incorporation of a new sequence of activities into the course.
This course was designed to deepen understanding of how Earth systems change by interpreting real data gathered in the field and from online repositories, and to develop pedagogical approaches that foster students’ ability to investigate a question and reason scientifically from data they collect. The course-enhancement was designed to deepen pre-service teachers’ ability to productively respond to their students’ descriptions and reasoning about the data they collect as evidence. Pre-instruction, teachers took two different assessments (one multiple-choice, one open-response) designed to measure how students reason about data. They will also critiqued samples of students’ responses to one of the open-response assessment questions. During the course, teachers examined learning standards and researched literature related to data literacy pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), explored a pedagogical framework for improving how students reason about data, and worked in groups using rubrics to score and discussed many samples of students’ work in terms of the literature, the standards, PCK, the framework, and classroom realities. For “post” comparison, teachers took the assessments again and critiqued samples of student work drawing from discussions and resources acquired in the course. These will qualitatively be compared with “pre” critiques for depth of comments as related to learning standards, literature, PCK, and the data literacy framework.
Course Description: SMT 504 is a science content and teaching methods course designed for in-service and pre-service teachers wishing to engage their science students in investigating genuine environmental and Earth science research questions. Teachers develop their own research and data analysis skills by exploring and analyzing many kinds of archived environmental data and by designing and conducting open-ended field and computer-based research investigations that could be conducted by middle or high school students. Teachers will review education research literature to become familiar with pedagogical content knowledge related to guiding students to collect, analyze, and represent data as evidence to support a claim. Participants will identify target science and mathematics learning standards and compile instructional strategies that support them. They will also deepen their own understanding of science content related to how Earth systems change and how changes are measured.
Example of a Class Discussion:
Course Materials:
SMT 504 Student Feedback Forms
Examples of Student work:
Student Research Project Examples