Collaborative Research: Building Global Climate Change Literacy through Analogical Reasoning

地球系统科学 (40) 该项目正在创建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，并评估学生使用类比提出和评估有关全球气候变化的主张的能力。 PI 正在测试这样一个假设：通过在关注全球变化的通识教育科学课程中明确指导类比推理，我们可以显着提高非科学专业学生的气候变化素养。该项目重点关注类比推理，因为 1) 类比推理是高级学习的核心，2) 科学家通常使用类比来生成假设并解决研究问题，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 正在使用同一位讲师教授的匹配实验和对照课程来检验他们的假设。 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 正在根据认知科学家对类比推理的理解开发新的教学材料和评估工具。 特别是，PI 正在帮助学生理解类比，并通过关注数十年研究提出的类比推理的五个维度：检索、映射、评估、抽象和重新表示来提高他们的类比推理能力。通过分析其方法的有效性，PI 正在开发一个新的详细模型，用于专门在提高气候变化素养的背景下如何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.