DEVELOPING MIDDLE SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHERS’ UNDERSTANDING OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND LITERACY PRACTICES THROUGH AN INTENSIVE A SUMMER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCE

The Next Generation Science Standards blends disciplinary core ideas or DCI’s (e.g. climate change), science and engineering practices (e.g. modeling), and crosscutting concepts (e.g. systems) for instruction and assessment, which is the framework for “three-dimensional learning.” Students develop their understanding of DCI’s in response to questions about natural phenomena (e.g. what happened to all of the lobsters in Long Island Sound) and construct preliminary hypotheses to explain it. Learners then investigate this phenomenon through a variety of evidence-based activities to revise their initial explanation. This three-dimensional framework was the foundation to construct a climate change unit that was implemented with middle school science teachers as part of a three-year federally-funded Teacher Quality Partnership grant professional development (PD) experience to improve teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogy.

A unit from this PD project, “What is Affecting Marine Life in Long Island Sound,” was constructed around three NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas, including MS ESS3.D: Global Climate Change, MS ESSE.C. Human Impacts on Earth Systems, and MS LS4.D: Biodiversity and Humans. Science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and standards-based literacy practices were emphasized as part of the unit. To start, an anchoring phenomenon highlighted the sharp decline of the lobster population in Long Island Sound from the 1990’s to present. Participants were asked, based on limited evidence, to provide initial hypotheses that included conceptual scientific models to explain this phenomenon. Afterwards, participants completed a series of in-depth science investigations that explored increasing temperature and greenhouse gases, both short- and long-term, climate proxies such as ice cores and pollen samples from a local lake, and feedback loops of the climate system. Based on these investigations, participants revised their initial explanations and models based on the evidence they collected. In addition, at the end of the unit, participants completed an intensive engineering design problem that explored possible adaptions as solutions to the effects of climate change on local communities. Overall, teachers content knowledge of climate change improved significantly.