Precipitating Change in Alaskan and Hawaiian Schools: Modeling Mitigation of Coastal Erosion

阿拉斯加和夏威夷也面临着海岸侵蚀带来的类似挑战。该项目将让中学生参与基于地方的海岸侵蚀调查，将土著知识和西方STEM观点相结合。本土观点强调从地方和社区学习。西方的STEM观点将侧重于系统和计算思维。该项目将利用学习通用设计（UDL）原则设计和实施一系列课堂调查，创建一个词汇表，翻译土著语言，以及帮助学生理解土著和西方科学术语的方法。海岸侵蚀内容将与阿拉斯加和夏威夷的中学教师和学生合作进行试点、改进和实施。项目研究将建立并完善一个学习进展框架，该框架描述了学生如何发展对随时间发生的海岸侵蚀的理解。研究还将考察学生如何在地球科学和计算思维方面理解和发展日益复杂和综合的知识和实践。知识和实践领域将包括解释和预测系统中的事件和过程，以及开发问题的解决方案。该项目的课程和研究结果将广泛传播给研究人员、阿拉斯加和夏威夷的学校和教师，以及土著教育和科学教育界，以分享对该项目的模式和经验教训的理解。该项目将把中学生置于文化一致的认识论立场（学生作为人类学家），使他们能够从土著知识和西式探究中建立地球科学学习，并提高他们在海岸侵蚀背景下综合应用地球科学、数学和计算思维技能的能力。该项目将招募20名教师，预计将在大约24个教室中进行干预。项目研究和评估将调查文化一致性和科学和技术雄心勃勃的教学如何培养学生带来多种观点，包括土著和西方科学，以研究和解决社会科学问题。本项目将采用基于设计的实施研究方法来回答三个主要的研究问题。研究问题是：1：学生理解海岸侵蚀的不同方式是什么？学生的理解方式如何反映个人和文化（包括土著）的知识基础，以及反映与下一代科学标准一致的三维科学知识和实践的西方STEM观点？2：既重视学生的家庭文化又重视西方科学观点的文化一致性、多视角学习经验如何与学生的科学知识和实践的变化相关联，并将海岸侵蚀和计算思维结合起来？3：当学生遇到一个新的社会科学问题时，多角度的学习经历如何影响他们描述的学习方法？数据将使用混合方法进行分析。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。

Alaska and Hawaii face similar challenges with threats caused by coastal erosion. This project will engage middle school students in place-based coastal erosion investigations that interweave Indigenous knowledge and Western STEM perspectives. Indigenous perspectives will emphasize learning from place and community. Western STEM perspectives will focus on systems and computational thinking. The project will design and implement a series of classroom investigations using universal design for learning (UDL) principles, creating a glossary, translations for Indigenous languages, and ways to assist students in understanding of Indigenous and Western science terms. The coastal erosion content will be collaboratively piloted, refined, and implemented with middle school teachers and students in Alaska and Hawaii. Project research will build on and refine a learning progression framework that describes how students develop an understanding of coastal erosion that occurs over time. Research will also examine how students make sense of and develop increasingly complex and integrated knowledge and practice in Earth science and computational thinking. Areas of knowledge and practice will include explaining and predicting events and processes in systems and developing solutions to problems. The project’s curriculum and findings will be widely disseminated to researchers and the broader body of Alaskan and Hawaiian schools and teachers, as well as the Indigenous education and science education communities, to share understanding about the project’s model and lessons.The project will position middle school students in a culturally congruent epistemological stance (student-as-anthropologist), allowing them to build Earth science learning from both Indigenous knowledge as well as Western-style inquiry and promote their ability to apply integrated Earth science, mathematics, and computational thinking skills in the context of coastal erosion. The project will recruit 20 teachers, and the intervention is expected to be integrated into approximately 24 classrooms. Project research and evaluation will investigate how the culturally congruent and scientifically and technologically ambitious instruction prepares students to bring multiple perspectives, including Indigenous and Western science, to study and address socioscientific issues. This project will adopt a design-based implementation research approach to answer three main research questions. The research questions are: 1: What are different ways students make sense of coastal erosion? How do students’ ways of making sense reflect personal and cultural (including Indigenous) funds of knowledge and Western STEM perspectives reflective of Next Generation Science Standards-aligned three-dimensional science knowledge and practice? 2: How do culturally congruent, multi-perspective learning experiences that value both students’ home culture and Western science perspectives relate to changes in students’ science knowledge and practices integrating coastal erosion and computational thinking? 3: How do multi-perspective learning experiences influence the approaches to learning students describe when they encounter a new socioscientific issue? Data will be analyzed using a mixed methods approach.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.