CAREER: Learning Entropy and Energy Project (LEEP)

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Absent an adequate language to talk about change and the direction of change, sciencecurricula are fundamentally constrained to over-emphasize static constructs liketaxonomies and memorized sequences of events. In contrast with these over-simplified,statics-based curricula, the world students live in is complex and dynamic. Afundamental disconnect is created between what learners know of their world and thecurrent statics-based science they are taught in school. In addition to moving toward amath of change strand in school curricula and early university curricula (e.g. early non-calculussciences), a full dynamics-based curriculum needs to address the directed-nesswe experience in the world around us. When we get up in the morning, energy alwaysflows from our warm feet to the cold floor and never the other way around. The secondlaw of thermodynamics the entropy law is the only law of science that allowslearners to understand the directed-ness of physical process. Replacing statics-basedcurricula with a full dynamics-based reform depends vitally on being able to talk aboutchange but also on being able to talk about the direction of change. Recent educationalinnovations related to the early introduction of the math of change e.g. the use ofmotion detectors and powerful simulation software are starting to find their way intosignificant curricular reform. Unfortunately, entropy related fundamental research,materials development, and course-work aimed at advancing the dynamic-basedunderstanding of all learners is all but non-existent. This grant is aimed at addressingthis critical missing element in pursuing dynamics-based reform.Over a decade of entropy-based research and innovation leads me to believe thatentropy ideas can be incorporated into learning about energy dynamics early on inscience education, that entropy can be taught in a way that is cross-disciplinary and cross-level(from the very small to the very large), and that moving in this direction not onlyadvances student understanding of entropy but that the ability of all students to betterunderstand and succeed, at virtually all levels of their science learning, is significantlyadvanced. Although I intend for this entropy-focused work to impact science learningfrom late elementary through the wide range of undergraduate science courses, myprimary focus will be on two critical junctures in students' lives relative to formalscience learning: early high school and early university level work. Coming into thesejunctures many students are "still in the game" and are interested in further sciencestudy. Coming out of these junctures many students decide to leave, especially studentsfrom under-represented groups. Courses taught at these levels will serve both astestbeds for the efficacy of entropy-based learning and as research settings. In schools, Iwill focus primarily on the state-mandated, ninth-grade Integrated Physics and Chemistrycourse. At the university level I will focus on a newly developed undergraduate sciencecourse titled Entropy and Energy that I will co-teach with a research physicist who is alsoCo-Director of the completely restructured and rapidly growing new secondarycertification program called UTeach. Domain courses, such as this, in the new UTeachprogram are to model Standards-based teaching at the university level. Researchinsights related to student learning as such learning with entropy will be integratedwith my newly developed Knowing and Learning course that is the first requirededucation course for all the UTEACH students. Through the establishment of a workcircle of teachers in schools, through the establishment of a brown-bag seminar series atthe university, through research presentations and publications, and through thedevelopment of a Learning Entropy and Energy (LEEP) website, this project is intendedto support a larger conversation related to the efficacy and significance of learning aboutand with entropy as a vital part of moving towards a dynamics-based curriculum for allstudents.