State College teacher Bryan Brightbill wants his students to be well “grounded” -- so his seventh graders at Park Forest Middle School have drawn geological cross-sections of central Pennsylvania’s rock layers, identified rock samples and even made rocks out of sand and aquarium salt.
But the Penn State alumnus with a bachelor of science in geosciences (class of 2005) also wants his students to understand how the rocks that formed millions of years ago affect their lives today. To connect the geological past with the present, Brightbill is teaching a unit on the Marcellus Shale.
“Our geology has implications for the energy we use -- what it is, how we get it,” Brightbill said. “These students need to know where their energy comes from because they will be making the decisions of tomorrow that impact the world and the future.”
Brightbill is piloting a weeklong curriculum on the Marcellus Shale developed as part of a five-year, $9.2-million National Science Foundation grant to researchers in the colleges of Earth and Mineral Sciences and Education, Eberly College of Science and at Penn State Brandywine and Harrisburg.
The project’s goals are ambitious: to improve the teaching of Earth and space science by working with pre-service and experienced classroom teachers and to advance knowledge of how middle-grade students develop understanding of scientific concepts. The school districts involved include State College, Bald Eagle and Bellefonte in Centre County; and Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Reading from other areas of Pennsylvania.
Focusing on fundamental scientific concepts is a significant departure from educational tests and practices that emphasize memorization of vocabulary and facts and that chop science teaching up into unconnected or nonsequenced units.
“We are interested in how students’ learning about scientific concepts and explanations develops over time,” said Tanya Furman, project lead and professor of geosciences. “With that knowledge, we can create learning activities that will better enable students to build deep understanding.”
American students’ grades on science report cards show a need for improvement. As measured by the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only a third of American students in grades four, eight and 12 demonstrated “proficiency” when asked about concepts including tectonics and forms of energy or about practices such as identifying patterns in data and evaluating scientific investigations. Even fewer -- only 3 percent -- measured as “advanced.”
Yet a scientifically informed public is critical to understanding and addressing today’s complex and worldwide concerns about energy, the environment and climate.
“We need a citizenry that can make decisions about the environmental and energy challenges of the future,” said Furman, who also serves as assistant vice president and associate dean for undergraduate education. “By improving students’ mastery of essential Earth and space science content, we are not only helping them become more informed, but we are also enhancing their ability to do well in all fields of science.”
One reason the project has targeted students in the middle grades is that Earth and space science provide a gateway for continued study of STEM -- science, technology, engineering, mathematics -- fields in high school. In other words, students’ science experiences at this age either encourage or discourage them from pursuing additional science courses.
But many of the teachers who are working with those students lack any formal training or coursework in Earth and space sciences. Faced with teaching content they only know superficially, they struggle with helping students lay the conceptual foundations needed to understand complex science.
To better prepare those teachers, the project offers weeklong summer workshops in topics including “Solar System Astronomy” and “Plate Tectonics.” Key to those workshops is the use of real data, enabling teachers to engage in inquiry-based instructional practices which they can then take back to their classrooms.
New for 2012 is “Energy,” which will focus on the fundamental energy transfer processes that underlie electricity, home heating and transportation and about which most people are unaware, said Meredith Hill Bembenic, a postdoctoral scholar on the project who earned her doctorate in energy and mineral engineering.
Brightbill, who attended last summer’s “Climate and Climate Change” workshop, has already signed up for “Energy.”
“Energy is one of those keystone topics with real-world ties for students,” Brightbill said. “This workshop will not only expand my content knowledge, but it will help me develop new methods for connecting this topic to the experiences and decisions students are making and will make.”
For more information, visit http://essp.psu.edu online.