SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE INVESTIGATIONS THAT SUPPORT NGSS TEACHING AND LEARNING

The three-dimensional teaching and learning emphasized in theNext Generation Science Standards (NGSS) create a vision of an implemented science curriculum that actively engages students with scientific practices and crosscutting concepts to deepen their understanding of core ideas across science disciplines. To advance this vision, we have been engaged in a partnership with an urban high school to collaboratively design and implement a series of novel socio-environmental science investigations (SESI) using a geospatial curriculum approach to learning that enhances the science curriculum. The SESI investigations focus on students’ immediate urban environment and connect NGSS crosscutting concepts and scientific practices to disciplinary core ideas in Human Sustainability that address human impacts on earth systems, natural resources, global climate change, and developing possible solutions. The SESI investigations enable students to analyze past and present georeferenced data, carry out field data collection with GPS-enabled iPads, including pertinent socio-environmental data, and analyze geospatial patterns and relationships in a Web GIS. All of these actions then come together to inform a decision-making step concerning the future of their community. The investigations require students to gather information relevant to urban planning decisions in their own communities. Students take on the role of a decision-maker, and inform their thinking and reasoning about decisions based on their analysis of the data they gather, its connection to relevant social and environmental science content, and consideration of the implications for environmental sustainability. Our project uses a novel form of hybrid curriculum-linked professional development with both face-to-face and online learning approaches designed to promote teachers’ geospatial pedagogical content knowledge, in addition to social and environmental science content knowledge. We have found this approach to be effective in supporting teachers with the adoption of new NGSS learning activities using spatiallearning technologies and also with promoting teachers’ pedagogical design capacity for effective instructional enactment.