Tag Archives: geoscience

Forbes Group @ 2018 Earth Educators Rendezvous

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This summer, the Forbes team attended and presented at the 2018 Earth Educators’ Rendezvous on the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS.   As part of the conference, I had the unique opportunity to co-plan and co-facilitate a 3-day workshop – Advancing Transdisciplinary Dialogue in Geoscience Education Research – with my colleague Caitlin Callahan.  The objective of the workshop was to advance research around grand challenges associated with teaching about the Earth in the context of societal issues.  Attended by nearly 40 participants, the workshop was highly engaging for all involved.  Many thanks to our participants and invited speakers: Laura Zangori, Anne Egger, Steve Semken, and Donna Charlevoix.

The Rendezvous also afforded the opportunity to present work from the WELL project and NC-FEW.

Forbes, C.T., Scherer, H., Li, C., Millenbah, K., Sintov, N., & Wang, H-H. (2018, July).  Building a National Collaborative for Food, Energy, and Water Education (NC-FEW): Insights from a national conference.  Poster presented at the Earth Educators Rendezvous (EER), Lawrence, KS.

Lally, D., Forbes, C.T., McNeal, K., & Soltis, N. (2018, July). National Survey of Geoscience Teaching Practices 2016: Current trends in geoscience instruction of scientific modeling and systems thinking. Presentation at the Earth Educators Rendezvous (EER), Lawrence, KS.

Petitt, D., Lally, D., Forbes, C.T., Brozovic, N., & Franz, T. (2018, July). Water in society: undergraduate learning and reasoning about socio-hydrological issues. Paper presented at the Earth Educators Rendezvous (EER), Lawrence, KS.

It was wonderful to engage with the geoscience education community and spend time on the KU campus.  As always, Rock Chalk, Jayhawk!

Community Framework for Geoscience Education Research

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For the past year, I have been fortunate to be involved in an NSF-funded endeavor to identify and articulate grand challenges driving geoscience education research in the years to come.  The resulting product is a community framework for geoscience education research, which is freely-accessible to anyone with interests in this domain.  I served on a working group for one of the 10 strands focused on teaching about the Earth in the context of societal issues, a summary of which can be found in published form here.

Teasdale, R., Scherer, H., Holder, L., Boger, R., & Forbes, C.T. (2018). Research on teaching about Earth in the context of societal problems. In K. St. John (Ed.), Community Framework for Geoscience Education Research (pgs. 49-60). National Association of Geoscience Teachers. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.25885/ger_framework/5.

Many thanks to Kristen St. John and the other PIs for leading this effort!

WELS2 summer 2018 workshop

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In June, the WELS2 project team held our second 1-week workshop for more than 45 Nebraska middle- and high school science teachers from over a dozen school districts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Innovation Campus.  Building on the previous summer workshop, teachers learned groundwater quality sampling techniques, used a computer-based, data-driven water balance model to explore regional water challenges, toured the Nebraska Water Sciences Laboratory, and developed curricular resources to use these tools in their own classrooms.  Teachers also had the opportunity to participate in the workshop as part of a UNL graduate course – SCIL 800 Experiential Learning in Food, Energy, & Water II.  A special thanks goes out to colleagues Trenton Franz, Dan Snow, and Dana Divine for working with teachers to utilize extraordinary UNL resources and tools, as well as to Tina Vo and Kate Gibson for helping plan and coordinate the workshop.  We greatly appreciate funding from the USDA-NIFA PD-STEP program and Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) grant program through the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education, both of which have made this program possible. 

Invited talk at the U. of Maryland Center for Science and Technology (CSTE)

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In November, I was invited to visit the Center for Science and Technology (CSTE) at the University of Maryland. During my visit, I met with CSTE-affiliated faculty and graduate students and gave a Distinguished Lecture. My talk, entitled, “Scientific Modeling for K-16 Earth Systems Education: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Insights”, focused on empirical and theoretical work associated with the WELL, MoHSES, and CliMES projects.  This was a wonderfully engaging experience – many thanks to Randy McGinnis and Diane Kettelhut for the invitation!

NSF DRK-12 project funded – CliMES

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I am excited to announce our new project funded by the National Science Foundation’s Discovery Research K-12 program (DRL 1720838 and 1719872). In the High School Students’ Climate Literacy through Epistemology of Scientific Modeling (CliMES) project, we will engage in a 4-year, mixed-methods, design-based research project to investigate classroom use of EzGCM (Easy Global Climate Modeling), a web-based climate modeling suite designed to provide non-scientists experiences with climate modeling. We are developing and implementing a 6-week climate science module for secondary science classrooms designed around EzGCM. Each year, we will collect and analyze evidence of students’ model-based reasoning about climate, including pre-/post- measures of students’ conceptual and epistemic knowledge, curriculum-embedded modeling tasks, interviews, and videorecorded observations of instruction to investigate two research questions: 1) how do secondary students develop epistemic and conceptual knowledge about the Earth’s climate and climate science? and 2) how do secondary science teachers support students’ use of EzGCM to develop epistemic and conceptual knowledge about the Earth’s climate and climate science?  The project will impact over 50 secondary teachers and 3000 secondary students over four years and leverages a new partnership between Columbia University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, promoting cross-fertilization between climate scientists and science educators, in partnership with Nebraska school districts.

Published research on undergrad students’ reasoning about water SSIs

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Many thanks to all members of our research and instructional team who collaborated on a study investigating undergraduate students’ reasoning about water-focused socioscientific issues.  Carried out in the first iteration of the revised SCIL 101 course (formerly AGRI/NRES 103) with more than 200 students, study results illustrate strengths and limitations of students’ thinking about the use of groundwater for agriculture in the context of a multi-week course module.  Thanks to Dr. Jaime Sabel for leading this effort!

Sabel, J.L., Vo, T., Alred, A., Dauer, J.M., & Forbes, C.T. (2017). Undergraduate students’ scientifically-informed decision-making about socio-hydrological issues. Journal of College Science Teaching, 46(6), 64-72.

WELS2 summer 2017 workshop

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In June, the WELS2 project team held a 1-week workshop for more than 30 Nebraska middle- and high school science teachers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  The workshop focused on supporting teachers to learn to use a computer-based groundwater modeling tool, the Hydrogeology Challenge, and to develop instructional materials and supports that would enable them to use this tool within their existing science curriculum.

As part of the workshop, teachers explored the Next Generation Science Standards, conducted water-related investigations, learned about the scientific practice of modeling, and worked on curricular resources to support their own teaching.  Teachers also had the opportunity to participate in the workshop as part of a UNL graduate course – NRES 898 Teaching and Learning about Water Systems.  We thank our project partners from the Groundwater Foundation and Water for Food Global Institute for contributing to making this workshop a successful experience for all involved.  We look forward to continuing to work with NE teachers through ongoing academic year activities and a teacher research experience in summer, 2018.

MoHSES project research published in IJSE

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As the MoHSES project rapidly draws to a close, we are very pleased to continue publishing project research that reflects our project work over the 5 years of the project.  Our latest study, published in the International Journal of Science Education, explores implementation of the revised FOSS Water unit and 3rd-grade students’ model-based reasoning about water over the first two years of the project.  The study provides evidence that the ‘modeling-enhanced” version of the curriculum positively impacts student learning, though these effects vary greatly by teacher.  How teachers implement the curriculum appears to significantly impact the sophistication of students’ model-based explanations for water-related phenomena.

Zangori, L., Vo, T., Forbes, C.T., & Schwarz, C. (2017).  Supporting 3rd-grade students’ model-based explanations about groundwater: A quasi-experimental study of a curricular intervention.  In International Journal of Science Education, 39(11), 1421-1442.

 

SCIL 109 Water in Society Spring, 2017

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As part of the WELL project, our team had the chance to teach our new course – SCIL 109 Water in Society – this past spring semester.  It was an amazing opportunity work with 45 undergraduate students, both STEM and non-STEM majors from an array of programs.  It was also a wonderfully enriching experience to collaborate with colleagues spanning multiple disciplines as part of our instructional team.  The course touched on core hydrology concepts, exploration of contemporary real-world water-related challenges, and opportunities to communicate about both the scientific and non-scientific dimensions of these issues.  Students used computer-based water modeling tools based upon authentic datasets, worked in collaborative teams on long-term projects, participated in site visits, and developed and presented infographics to attendees at an international water-focused conference.   Please see our spring, 2017 syllabus and course calendar here.