ACTIVITIES GROUNDED IN EVIDENCE-BASED EXPLANATIONS HELP PRE-SERVICE ELEMENTARY EDUCATORS MOVE TOWARDS DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF CLIMATE SCIENCE

Within the context of a course on the fundamentals of climate science developed for pre-service elementary educators, we highlight an area where misconceptions were common: the differential heating of Earth’s surface. Representations of this phenomenon that allow first-hand data collection are easy to set up in the classroom and they can be used to inform multiple concepts fundamental to weather and climate, including energy transfer and transformation. We describe the strategies used to foster discussion about students’ beginning ideas, as well as the strategies used to help the students attend to evidence-based explanations.

In the standard experiment designed to demonstrate the differential heating of Earth’s surface (the response of a sample of soil and a sample of water to the presence and then absence of a source of radiant energy), students’ beginning ideas were uncovered through extensive discussion. Having students graph their predictions made discussions easier and gave students a way to consider the initial question more completely than if they had been simply asked which substance will heat up faster. In the rush to get to the activity, teachers often shorten or skip this discussion of beginning ideas. We describe misconceptions that were uncovered during this phase, including: (1) Students’ most common point of reference is the heating and cooling of food. In many cases they fail to recognize the significant water content present in many foods. (2) If students predict that soil will heat up faster than water, they often contend that it will retain that thermal energy longer than the water. (3) When students are asked to draw a graph to illustrate their ideas, they rarely attend to all components of the graph. When asked to describe their graph and answer questions, they cannot provide meaningful reasoning for all of their choices.

While highlighting misconceptions, an additional advantage of spending the time to uncover the students’ beginning ideas is that it affords multiple points of discussion that can continue throughout the entire activity and beyond. Classroom video, samples of student work, and findings from exit interviews illustrate how students can then focus on developing claims grounded in the evidence that they collect.