Environmental Innovation Challenges: Teaching and Learning Science Practices in the Context of Complex Earth Systems

当前科学教育的优先事项包括努力让学生参与科学推理，利用科学知识和实践来理解自然现象，并建设性地应对当地和全球的挑战。该项目通过让7-12年级的学生和教师团队参与四个竞争性挑战，为交通、农业或能源使用等领域的碳减排设计创新战略，以此回应这些优先事项。该项目扩展了学校的典型边界，使多个地点的学生团队能够通过在线讨论论坛、使用社交媒体和众包思想，在基于模型的推理中进行协作，以构建应对环境挑战的可能解决方案。项目研究将检查项目对学生学习和参与的影响。这个早期阶段的设计与开发研究是基于这样一个假设：由社交媒体和众包支持的竞争性挑战将吸引各种各样的学生参与持续而有意义的科学探究。在四年的时间里，该项目将设计和完善四项挑战，约有1000名13-17岁的学生参与其中。项目研究由三个总体问题指导，这些问题与挑战的设计、学校环境因素的影响以及学生的学习和自我效能感有关。问题是：(1)挑战环境的特征如何支持团队的工作，以及来自STEM历史上服务不足的社区的学生的参与？(2)学校生态系统中的哪些结构支持或阻碍团队合作？(3)参加挑战赛是否会产生预期的学生成果。预期成果包括：a)学习与项目重点科学相关的基本概念；b)参与学科核心思想、跨领域概念和科学与工程实践的学习；c)坚持完成挑战；d) STEM的自我效能感。学生和他们的老师将跨越学科界限，因为他们从化学、工程、数学、生物和社会科学中选择概念来支持他们的创新。教师、学生、工作人员和顾问将通过众包的方式就一系列问题向参赛团队提供意见和指导。设计研究将用于研究挑战环境的特征如何支持教师和团队的工作，实施研究将侧重于个人和团队层面的参与者学习。该项目将吸引至少25个团队，每个团队3-4名学生，研究人员将在挑战过程的所有阶段参与活动。将混合使用定性和定量分析来检查结果，并将女孩和其他来自服务不足人口的数据分类进行单独分析。探索研究preK-12项目（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高preK-12学生和教师对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和实证依据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Current priorities in science education include efforts to engage students in scientific reasoning and using the knowledge and practices of science to understand natural phenomena and constructively respond to local and global challenges. This project responds to these priorities by engaging teams of students and teachers of grades 7-12 in four competitive Challenges to design innovative strategies for carbon mitigation in areas such as transportation, agriculture or energy use. The project expands the typical boundaries of schools by enabling teams of students in multiple locations to collaborate in model-based reasoning through online discussion forums, using social media, and crowdsourcing ideas to construct possible solutions to environmental challenges. Project research will examine the impacts of the project on student learning and engagement. This early stage Design and Development study is guided by the hypothesis that competitive challenges supported by social media and crowdsourcing will engage a diverse array of students in sustained and meaningful scientific inquiry. Over a period of four years, the project will design and refine four Challenges that will engage approximately 1,000 students of ages 13-17. Project research is guided by three overarching questions related to the design of the Challenges, the influence of school contextual factors, and student learning and self-efficacy. The questions are: (1) How do features of the challenge environment support the work of teams, and the participation of students from communities historically underserved in STEM? (2) What structures within the school ecosystem support or raise obstacles to team work? And (3) Does participation in a Challenge result in the intended student outcomes. Intended outcomes include: a) Learning of basic concepts related to the science of the project focus; b) Engagement in learning disciplinary core ideas, cross-cutting concepts and science and engineering practices; c) Persistence in completing a Challenge; and d) self-efficacy in STEM. Students and their teachers will cross disciplinary boundaries as they choose concepts from chemistry, engineering, mathematics, biology, and social science to support their innovations.Teachers, students, staff members and advisors will comment and provide quidance to the teams on a range of issues through crowdsourcing. Design research will be used to examine how features of the Challenge environment supports the work of teachers and teams, and implementation research will focus on participant learning at the individual and team levels. The project will engage at least 25 teams of 3-4 students each, and researchers will track team activity during all phases of the Challenge process. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative analyses will be used to examine outcomes, and data for girls and others from underserved populations will be disaggregated for separate analyses.The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.