TESTING THE EFFICACY OF A PLACE-BASED GEOSCIENCE CURRICULUM THAT EMBEDS SCIENCE CONTENT IN A CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ISSUE OF WATER QUALITY

Concerned about the disproportionate exposure to environmental toxins in poor communities, recent cases of environmental injustice with respect to poor water quality, and motivated by the lack of curricular access for K-12 students to educational opportunities that demonstrate the relevance of science content to their lived experiences, I have designed an investigative learning curriculum to support students in using geoscience content for socio-scientific problem solving. The curriculum consists of four water-quality themed learning experiences totaling 220 minutes of instruction. Guided by the design principle of learning by doing (Dewey, 1913), the learning experiences present explicit connections between geoscience concepts related to water resources, and basic water quality testing—e.g., temperature, pH, and conductivity (TDS)—of locally collected water samples. This instructional approach is grounded in a socio-cognitive model of geoscience education designed to support student interest, sense of competence, and transformation with respect to perceived value and relevance of geoscience content. The goal of this research is to examine whether a place-based geoscience curriculum contextualized in a current water quality issue would lead to positive shifts over time in student knowledge. This curriculum was implemented in four different high school settings across the United States. Student-generated data was analyzed for pre, post, and delayed post shifts in knowledge. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) show both statistically significant and meaningful shifts in knowledge pre to post--F(1, 159) = 7.34, p= .007,η² = .044. Similarly, there were statistically significant positive shifts in knowledge at all three time points--F(8, 258), p= .049, η²= .058. This presentation will highlight the theoretical foundation of the curricular model and results of quantitative analyses of students learning.