The Understanding Global Change Project: Equitable Teaching Strategies and Professional Learning Communities

Abstract:

It is essential that we prepare tomorrow’s scientists, engineers, and communities to respond to the ongoing climate and environmental crises, and enable them to plan for a sustainable future. To successfully address these needs (which are also inherent in the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards) requires contextualizing learning using focal, locally relevant phenomena, and using student-centered, equitable teaching practices that help students construct their understanding of the world around them. These shifts in teaching practices are embedded in the suite of instructional tools developed by the Understanding Global Change (UGC) Project at the University of California Museum of Paleontology. These online UGC tools help educators design NGSS-responsive instructional units that involve iterative conceptual modeling to make student thinking visible as they investigate the causes, consequences, and solutions to climate change. To support these shifts in instructional design and teaching practices, the UGC Project has established Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in both California and Maryland.

Since 2017, high school teachers have been introduced to the UGC materials by attending workshops where they experience a coherent instructional unit about a climate change phenomenon (e.g. sea level rise, phenology, biogeography) as learners. Teachers then modify that unit to be responsive to their particular classrooms needs, and implement the unit and collect and analyze the resulting student models. After implementation of the initial unit, teachers reconvene to share their experiences, and collaboratively develop additional instructional units that embed the UGC models and teaching practices. Some PLCs consist of teachers within one school, but others include teachers from various schools and districts. Teacher survey data suggest that the PLC meetings provide the resources and support necessary to shift instructional design towards a more integrated, Earth systems and constructivist approach to science instruction. Future studies will indicate if these teaching practices support the development of student systems thinking skills that empower them to engage in individual and collective actions to address local and global climate and environmental problems.