Facilitating a Deeper Understanding of Change in the Earth System on Multiple Time Scales

促进学生了解地球系统在多个时间尺度上的变化是一个试点项目，以开发为期一周的活动单位集中在冰冻圈，与学生一起实施活动，并研究其有效性。 这个项目的动机是越来越需要今天的学生充分了解地球系统如何变化，使他们能够作为科学家，决策者和公民解决未来的环境挑战。 该项目将为高中生理解地球系统在多个时间尺度上的变化所遇到的困难提供新的见解，并设计活动和材料，帮助他们及其教师克服这些挑战。 该项目的总体目标是：1）主要利用现有资源，建立一系列脚手架活动和调查，帮助学生更充分地了解冰冻圈如何在多个时间尺度上变化，以及它如何影响地球系统的其他组成部分，以及2）调查已开发的活动和调查序列的有效性，以帮助学生了解地球系统的组成部分如何以及为什么随着时间的推移而变化，应用这些知识改进本研究中使用的活动单元，并将这些知识和材料提供给更广泛的教育界。 这项工作将提供一个坚实的基础，在此基础上开发一个完整的高中顶点地球系统科学课程，将包括更广泛的复杂性和时间尺度在地球系统中存在-一个课程，这是现在在得克萨斯州的书籍-并提供这些材料，高中教师和学生在全国各地通过地球实验室的网站。 此外，该项目还将设立一个教师专业发展方案，为高中教师提供使用这些材料的培训。 项目合作伙伴包括TERC（项目牵头和材料开发）、密歇根州立大学和密西西比州立大学（评价和研究）、得克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校（得克萨斯地球和空间科学革命项目-材料审查和实施）。

The Facilitating Student Understanding of Change in the Earth System on Multiple Time Scales is a pilot project to develop a week-long unit of activities focused on the cryosphere, implement the activities with students, and study their effectiveness. This project is motivated by the increasing need for today's students to sufficiently understand how the Earth system changes so they can address the environmental challenges of the future as scientists, decisions makers, and citizens. This project will provide new insights on the difficulties high-school students have in comprehending Earth system changes on multiple time scales, and to design activities and materials that can help them and their teachers overcome these challenges. The overarching goals of this project are to: 1) build, mainly with existing resources, a sequence of scaffolded activities and investigations that will help students more fully understand how the cryosphere changes on multiple time scales and how it impacts and is impacted by the other components of the Earth system, and 2) investigate the effectiveness of the developed sequence of activities and investigations at helping students understand how and why a component of the Earth system varies over time, to apply that knowledge to improve the unit of activities used in this study, and to make that knowledge and materials available to the broader educational community. This work will provide a firm foundation on which to develop a full high-school capstone Earth system science course that will include the broader range of complexity and time scales present in the Earth system - a course which is now on the books in Texas - and make these materials available to high-school teachers and students across the country through the EarthLabs web site. In addition, the project will create a teacher professional development program to provide training to high-school teachers on the use of these materials. Project partners include TERC (project lead and materials development), Michigan State University and Mississippi State University (evaluation and research), University of Texas-Austin (Texas Earth and Space Science Revolution Project - materials review and implementation).