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

促进学生对地球系统多时间尺度变化的理解是一个试点项目，旨在开发一个为期一周的以冰冻圈为重点的活动单元，与学生一起实施这些活动，并研究其有效性。这个项目的动机是今天的学生越来越需要充分了解地球系统是如何变化的，这样他们就可以作为科学家、决策者和公民应对未来的环境挑战。该项目将为高中生在理解多个时间尺度上的地球系统变化方面的困难提供新的见解，并设计能够帮助他们和他们的老师克服这些挑战的活动和材料。这个项目的总体目标是：1)主要利用现有资源，建立一系列活动和调查，以帮助学生更全面地了解冰冻圈在多个时间尺度上如何变化，以及它如何影响和受地球系统其他组成部分的影响；2)调查已开发的活动和调查序列在帮助学生理解地球系统的一个组成部分如何以及为什么随时间变化方面的有效性。运用这些知识来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。这项工作将为开发一个完整的高中地球系统科学课程奠定坚实的基础，该课程将包括地球系统中存在的更广泛的复杂性和时间尺度-这门课程现在已经在德克萨斯州的书中-并通过地球实验室网站将这些材料提供给全国的高中教师和学生。此外，该项目将创建一个教师专业发展计划，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（项目领导和材料开发），密歇根州立大学和密西西比州立大学（评估和研究），德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校（德克萨斯州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).