Collaborative Research: Building Global Climate Change Literacy through Analogical Reasoning

地球系统科学(40)这个项目正在创造新的学习材料和策略，以培养学生通过类比推理全球气候变化的能力，并正在评估学生使用类比来提出和评估关于全球气候变化的主张的能力。PI正在测试这样一个假设，即我们可以通过在专注于全球变化的普通教育-科学课程中明确教授类比推理来显著提高非理科专业学生的气候变化素养。该项目将重点放在类比推理上，因为1)类比推理在更高水平的学习中是核心，2)科学家经常使用类比来产生假设和解决研究问题，3)科学家通常使用类比来传达有关导致全球气候变化的复杂系统的信息。PI们正在使用由同一位教师教授的匹配的实验课和控制课来检验他们的假设。他们正在评估学生通过混合方法对推动全球变化的过程进行因果解释的能力。PI正在开发新的教学材料和评估工具，其基础是认知科学家对类比推理的理解。特别是，PI帮助学生理解类比，并通过专注于数十年研究提出的类比推理的五个维度来提高他们的类比推理能力：检索、映射、评估、抽象和重新表征。通过分析他们方法的有效性，私人投资机构正在开发一种新的、详细的模型，说明如何特别在提高气候变化知识的背景下最好地教授类比推理。

Earth Systems Science (40)This project is creating new learning materials and strategies to foster the ability of students to reason by analogy about global climate change and is assessing student ability to use analogies to make and evaluate claims about global climate change. The PIs are testing the hypothesis that we can dramatically improve the climate change literacy of non-science majors through explicit instruction about analogical reasoning in a general education-science course that focuses on Global Change. The project is focusing on analogical reasoning because 1) analogical reasoning is central in higher-level learning, 2) scientists routinely use analogies to generate hypotheses and to solve research problems, and 3) scientists commonly use analogies to convey information about complex systems responsible for global climate change. The PIs are testing their hypothesis using matched experimental and control classes taught by the same instructor. They are assessing the ability of students to generate causal explanations of processes that drive global change through a mixed methods approach. The PIs are developing new instructional materials and assessment instruments based on the understanding of analogical reasoning by cognitive scientists. In particular, the PIs are helping students to understand analogies and are also improving their analogical reasoning by focusing on five dimensions of analogical reasoning suggested by decades of research: retrieval, mapping, evaluation, abstraction and re-representation. By analyzing the efficacy of their approach, the PIs are developing a new, detailed model of how best to teach analogical reasoning specifically within the context of improving climate change literacy.