Anderson, C.A., C. Wilson, L. Mohan, B. Covitt, K. Gunkel, B. Tsurusaki, A. Sharma, I. Cho, and H. Jin.
Presented at the All Scientist Poster Reception (2006-05-09 )
Both our world and our scientific understanding of the world are changing in fundamental ways: Our world is changing because human populations and the technological systems that support us have grown to the point where we are fundamentally altering the natural environmental systems that sustain all life on earth. Scientists are shifting the focus of their studies from natural systems to coupled human and natural systems for which the interplay between the systems that provide humans with food, energy, transportation, water, and housing and the earth’s natural ecosystems has become a primary focus of study.The changing world changes the nature of responsible citizenship. We must try to develop education systems that will prepare all of our citizens to play their roles knowledgeably and responsibly. The required K-12 science curriculum needs to emulate recent developments in science by emphasizing inter-disciplinary accounts that reveal the linkages among environmental systems.We report assessments of K-12 students’ reasoning about environmental systems. Trends from elementary through high school that show increasing understanding of both fundamental principles and processes in environmental systems. For example, high school students are much more likely than elementary school students to be aware of atomic-molecular and large scale systems, to suggest mechanisms for processes, and to try to apply fundamental principles such as conservation of matter and energy. Even at the high school level, though, most students’ understanding of coupled human and natural systems is disturbingly incomplete. Very few students were able to connect atomic-molecular, macroscopic, and large-scale processes. Important aspects of environmental systems, including gases, decomposers, and connections between human and natural systems, remained “invisible” to most students (and thus were unaccounted for in their explanations of processes in systems).
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