by editor | Jan 15, 2019 | Learning Theory, Place-based Education
Photo courtesy of Mike Brown.
Not One More Cute Project for the Kids:
Neal Maine’s Educational Vision
by Gregory A. Smith
Lewis & Clark College, Professor Emeritus
PART TWO
(see Part One here)
Sustaining Neal’s Place-Based Vision of Education: Lessons Learned
Despite the power and attractiveness of these educational practices, few of them remain in evidence after the close to 20 years since Neal retired and started devoting his time to land conservation and nature photography, one of the reasons he sought me out to document central elements of his work in Seaside and the north coast. He is thus well aware of the difficulty of institutionalizing teaching approaches that run contrary to the direction embraced by most contemporary schools. Part of the reason behind this outcome might be related to the way this dilemma is framed in dualistic terms. Rather than seeing the implementation of Neal’s vision as an either-or proposition, a more productive strategy might be to adopt a both-and perspective and then find ways that more of the kinds of things that Neal encouraged could become part of the mainstream educational agenda, not replacing what is now familiar and widely accepted but balancing this with an approach capable of generating higher levels of student engagement, ownership, and meaning. To that end, here are six lessons I take from what I’ve learned from Neal over the years:
- Give as much priority to student questions as to required standards.
- Value excited learners as much as competent test takers.
- Make as much time for community and outside-of-classroom explorations as the mastery of textbook knowledge.
- Create organizational structures that encourage creativity as much as accountability.
- Encourage teachers to partner with students as co-learners as much as they serve as their instructors.
- Develop teachers as alert to unexpected learning opportunities as they are to curricular requirements.
Give as much priority to student questions as to required standards. Human beings are intellectually primed to investigate questions whose answers are not immediately apparent. Think of the appeal of mystery novels, movies, or television programs, our attraction to riddles, the appeal of crossword puzzles. Although these formats involve no ownership on the part of readers, listeners, or players, they still are capable of eliciting attention and time commitment. Even more powerful are the questions we come up with ourselves. Part of the power of the educational approach Neal encouraged teachers to develop lay in the way he tapped into this human desire. Here’s one more story from the tour as an example of the possible. The students who had been involved in the Pompey Wetlands project at one point got ahold of a tape recorder and oscilloscope and began recording one another’s laughter. They had been studying the sounds and images (on the oscilloscope) of whale songs. They wondered whether their individual laughter would have some of the same recognizable visual features on the oscilloscope as what they had observed with whales. They found that they did and after a time could associate different visual patterns with the laughter of specific students in the classroom. Imagine their fascination at having made this discovery. Such fascination is the stuff of serious learning.
Value excited learners as much as competent test takers. Making time for student questions Is one way to excite learning. Another is to provide the opportunity to do things as well as hear about them or meet people as well as read about them. Part of that doing can be as simple as taking a walk in the woods or planting a garden. Part of it could involve designing an experiment to see whether moss really does only grow on the north side of trees. Part of it could involve participating in a group that sees what’s on the river bottom across a transect of the Columbia River. The possibilities of the doing and the investigating are nearly limitless. Such learning opportunities take advantage of human curiosity and the pleasure our species takes in gaining new skills and competencies. I can imagine some of the stories that children who had learned to keep a boat on straight course across the Columbia must have told their parents when they got home that evening—or what students who participated as photographers in the Day in the Life project shared. Not all learning experiences in school will be as memorable or as exciting as these, but some of them should be and not only on an infrequent basis. Things should be happening in school that fire students’ imaginations and intellects, things that instill in them a desire to learn more. Mastery of information for tests of one sort or another is one the requirements of life in modern societies, and it is a mastery we desire from the experts we turn to when in need of medical, legal, or mechanical services. The demand for such testing is not going to go away. But what ignites deep learning is an emotional connection with different topics, the personalization of learning that Neal sought to spread throughout the Seaside School District, something much more likely to happen by getting kids into the thick of things and engaging them in projects that demand their involvement.
Make as much time for community and outside-of-classroom explorations as the mastery of textbook knowledge. The knowledge found within textbooks is not without value; it is, after all, one of the central tasks of education to transmit culture to the young. At issue is whether this culture is being linked to the lives of children and youth in ways that communicate its significance and meaning. In the past, the authority (and fear) invested in teachers, ministers, and older relatives was enough to ensure the attention of many children to these issues. This is no longer the case in part thanks to the media, to mass culture, and to the weakening of traditional institutions like the family, school, and church. Place-based educators argue that one way to address this issue involves situating learning within the context of students’ own lived experience and the experience of people in their community. When this learning also engages them in the investigation of important local issues and provides them with the opportunity to share their findings with other peers and adults, so much the better. One of the strongest motivators for human participation is the chance to engage in activities that are purposeful and valued by others. Experiences like the health fair described earlier can both encourage involvement and strengthen students’ mastery of the knowledge and skills their teachers are attempting to convey to them. More students, furthermore, seem likely to produce higher quality work when they grasp its social significance and know it will be viewed and examined by community members as well as their teacher.
Create organizational structures that encourage creativity as much as accountability. One of the consequences of the standards and accountability movement since the 1980s has been the tendency on the part of many educators to teach to the test and for their administrators to assess their competence on the basis of students’ scores. School administrators have also become more likely to require teachers to justify the activities they bring into the classroom on the basis of specific curricular aims or benchmarks. Given the degree to which schools, for decades, have failed to adequately prepare non-White and lower income students, accountability structures are clearly needed, but the way they are currently being used has resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum and a reduction in teachers’ ability to respond to learning opportunities presented by either students or community members. Place- and community-based education requires the capacity to improvise and make use of instructional possibilities that present themselves during the school year; these possibilities can’t always be anticipated. Embracing them demands the willingness of teachers to follow interesting leads while at the same time looking for ways that curricular requirements can be addressed by doing so. When schools impose both constraints and reward structures that inhibit this kind of flexibility, fewer teachers become willing to experiment in the way teachers who worked with Neal were able to. School districts can go a long way to encouraging creativity by inviting innovative teachers like Neal to share their expertise with others, either as teachers on special assignment or as members of within-district teams responsible for professional development. Addressing policies that affect daily schedules, the school calendar, and transportation requests can also do much to make learning in the community both possible and accessible.
Encourage teachers to partner with students as co-learners as much as they serve as their instructors. It is not surprising that teachers feel uncomfortable about venturing into unfamiliar intellectual terrain with their students, something that gaining knowledge about what may be a new or minimally examined place and community will necessarily require. The same thing is true of pursuing questions that aren’t going to be answered by the textbook but demand data gathering and analysis. Teaching in this way involves a certain relinquishment of control and the willingness to trust students to be engaged participants in a process of collective learning. This doesn’t mean that a teacher only becomes a “guide on the side” completely following students’ lead and offering assistance only when needed. The teacher instead becomes a “model learner,” the person in the room with more expertise in knowing how to frame questions, seek out information, assess its credibility, locate appropriate experts, create experiments, organize data and analyze findings, and prepare presentations. There will still be a need for mini-lessons about specific content tied into students’ investigations, but the primary task of a teacher with many place-based units will be—like a graduate school advisor—to demonstrate what it means to be an independent learner committed to uncovering the truth inherent in different situations—just as some of the students attempted to discover whether moss always grows on the north side of trees when they began asking questions of the watershed. Moving into a role like this will be disconcerting for many teachers, but the rewards can be worth their initial discomfort as they find themselves no longer teaching the same thing every year but joining their students in a process of intellectual discovery and knowledge creation.
Develop teachers as alert to unexpected learning opportunities as they are to curricular requirements. Enacting the previous five suggestions involves cultivating teachers who feel competent enough about their capacity as educators–drawing upon an analogy from the kitchen–to invent new and healthful dishes from ingredients at hand as they do following recipes. Recipes are certainly useful, but the test of an experienced cook is found in what they can create from scratch. Toward the end of our day together, Neal told a story about a storm-felled Sitka spruce in a park just across the street from a local middle school. Neal and a teacher there recognized the learning potentiality of this fallen giant and were able to forestall city employees for a couple of weeks as students conducted a tree necropsy. Especially valuable was the possibility of seeing at ground level the biological activity that goes on at the crown of a mature tree. In many instances, this learning resource would have been seen as no more than a mess to be cleaned up rather than an opportunity for an in-depth and unique scientific investigation. Novice and even experienced teachers need to be exposed to stories like this one that invite them to consider possibilities they may have never or rarely encountered during the course of their own education. Neal recognized that teaching in this way might be more of an art form than something that cab be easily taught but still offered the following guidance: “Don’t sleep on the way to school. Have your brain engaged. Always be looking for opportunities to make it come to life, especially if it’s community based. That really makes it work!”
Paying It Forward
My day-long journey through a partial history of Neal Maine’s work in Seaside deepened my understanding of his vision of the possible and at the same time his frustration with how difficult it has been to get many of his good ideas to stick. Early in our conversation he spoke of the way our society’s conventional vision of schooling constrains the education he believes needs to happen if young people are to grow into responsible citizens able to bring fresh and potentially more appropriate ideas to the challenges of living in the 21st century. Rather than asking students to be the passive recipients of information passed on to them by others in an effort to prepare them for adulthood and citizenship, educators need to give children the chance to participate now as data gatherers, knowledge producers, and community participants. As Neal put it, “You ought to exploit someone who is uncontaminated with having the same old answer. . . . How much could you exploit them, so to speak, in a positive, productive, humane, and sincere way? The irony of it is that the effort to exploit that capacity becomes the most powerful preparation possible for a later point in your life cycle which is what we should call adulthood.” This, not the creation of “one more cute project for the kids,” was Neal’s aim when he attempted to stimulate educational innovation in districts along the Northern Oregon and Southern Washington coast and influenced the thinking of rural educators across the United States as a board member of the Annenberg Rural Challenge.
He found that institutionalizing changes like the ones he enacted is not easy. A similar lesson was learned through the Rural Challenge, as well. As a board member of the Rural School and Community Trust I had a chance to be in touch with a number of the schools or districts that had received grants from the earlier Rural Challenge. Without the added resources and the network of support provided by that well-funded effort, it was difficult for teachers and administrators to sustain the work they had accomplished during that five-year period.
Regardless of these difficulties, ideas set in motion during that time are continuing to evolve. One of Neal’s Oregon colleagues, Jon Yoder, played a significant role in shaping the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative in Michigan that has sought to make environmental stewards out of the state’s children and youth for over a decade. Much of the work done there bears the stamp of Neal’s efforts, affecting over 115,000 students since the program began in 2007 (https://greatlakesstewardship.org/). Across the United States, a survey of place- and community-based educators completed in 2016 surfaced over 150 schools that are retooling their curriculum and instruction in ways that advance the aims Neal pursued in the Pacific Northwest (https://awesome-table.com/-KlsuLBGU0pYWpjFH1uh/view). Many other schools were also surfaced through a project sponsored by the Getting Smart website that has created a blog where teachers have been able to post their own stories about place-based education (http://www.gettingsmart.com/categories/series/place-based-education/). Finally, well-established institutions like Eastern Michigan University (https://www.emich.edu/coe/news/2016/2016-05-10-a-new-wave-of-urban-education.php) and the Teton Science Schools in Wyoming (https://education-reimagined.org/pioneers/teton-science-schools/) are creating teacher education and professional development programs aimed at preparing teachers able to embrace and then deliver learning experiences likely to lead to the forms of participation, citizenship, and community change Neal hoped to engender.
Whether schools on their own will be able to support and sustain innovations like these remains an open question, but the persistence of these ideas and the possibilities they are stimulating seem hopeful. Believing as I do that cultures change more through the telling of stories than bureaucratic manipulation, I encourage readers to have conversations about the work of Neal Maine and his educational vision. Going even further, for those of you who are teachers, try some of these possibilities out in your own schools and communities and see what happens. Then share your experiences with others—both the things that work and those that don’t. Learn from one another. As a tribute to Neal and the future, let’s see how long we can keep these ideas alive and how far we might be able to spread them.
Greg Smith is an emeritus professor who taught for 23 years in the Graduate School of Education and Counseling at Lewis & Clark College. He’s keeping busy in his retirement serving on the board of the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative in Michigan and the educational advisory committee of the Teton Science Schools in Wyoming; at home, he’s co-chairing a local committee that is seeking to develop curriculum regarding the Portland-Multnomah County Climate Action Plan. He is the author or editor of six books including Place- and Community-Based Education in Schools with David Sobel.
by editor | Aug 13, 2018 | Marine/Aquatic Education
The search for sea slugs
Linking non-divers to the excitement of ocean discovery
by Elise Pletcher
Citizen Science and Volunteer Coordinator
The Marine Science and Technology Center
Highline College
The Dendronotus iris, a species of nudibranch recently found in one of the MaST Aquarium tanks.
he Nudibranch Team is a citizen science volunteer program at the Marine Science and Technology Center of Highline College. Volunteers work with Aquarium Staff to record populations of nudibranchs (colorful sea slugs). The MaST Center’s 3,000-gallon aquarium is operated on a “flow-through” model where 250 gallons of unfiltered Puget Sound water is pumped every minute through the tanks. This water brings with it several kinds of plankton, which are hard to identify and collect in the open waters of the Puget Sound, but within our tanks can be identified at the species level. Even once they are past their planktonic larval stage, many of the nudibranchs found in our aquarium are less than 1 cm in length!
This system offers the unique opportunity to record abundance of several nudibranch species throughout the year. Citizen scientists on our nudibranch team are trained to identify upwards of twenty nudibranch species, and use flashlights to track them down in our tanks. Why nudibranchs you may ask? They make an excellent species to study because each species is very distinct morphologically. Nudibranchs are the subject of a lot of macrophotography here in the Puget Sound; their bright colors and patterns make them a photogenic group of animals. Many of the animals in our aquarium are collected, but the nudibranchs come in naturally. When we see a nudibranch, it is exciting, because we get to discover them in the tanks! The thrill of not knowing what you are going to see is also a key part of what makes diving so exciting. The Nudibranch Team provides this thrill to non-divers.
The MaST’s Nudibranch Team hosts a diverse crowd with a wide range of abilities. Some are divers who already have a passion for filming nudibranchs, while others are just learning about these sea slugs for the first time. Our team is made up of mother-child duos, music teachers, retirees, and recent college graduates, all with one thing in common: their obsession with these peculiar sea slugs. You don’t need a SCUBA certification to get involved, just an interest in peering into a tank with a flashlight for an hour or two a week. Volunteers start with a 1.5 hour training in which they learn all about nudibranchs and how to identify them, including morphological traits. After the training, they’re given an identification guide, a data collection sheet, and set loose. Of all the MaST’s volunteer programs the Nudibranch Team demands the least amount of training time, it’s what helps make it so efficient.
The program originally started in 2013 when former Education Coordinator Eugene Disney and Manager Rus Higley started noticing certain nudibranchs were in the tanks in greater numbers depending on the time of year. They decided to round up a couple of volunteers to help count nudibranchs. Fast forward five years, and we are starting to see some interesting trends in nudibranch abundance emerge. Certain species are peaking in abundance at certain times of the year.
Of our most common species, each has a distinguished peak in annual abundance. Some tend to have high abundance throughout the year, but dip in the summer. While others peak in the summer months. This is interesting because nudibranchs are indicators of ocean health. If we see a huge spike in populations, something in ecosystem is likely influencing this spike. Since they occur naturally in our aquarium, we can use their abundance as a proxy for nudibranch abundance in the water at Redondo Beach. With the MaST’s four complete years’ of nudibranch population data, we have a strong baseline for tracking population changes. Nudibranch population changes can provide insight into the population health of their food sources: hydroids, sponges, and bryozoans.
We have shared this unique citizen science program at the Western Society of Naturalists Conference in 2017, Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference 2018, and the Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators Conference this summer! Are you attending the Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators Conference this summer? Check out our poster Tracking Temporal and Seasonal Changes in Nudibranch Populations from a Small Aquarium presented by the wonderful Vanessa Hunt, an Associate Professor at Central Washington University.
In the next few months, we hope to design a better classification system based on volunteer experience and expertise. This includes updating our identification keys to address species color variation. The ultimate goal for this program is to publish the data, and make it available for public use by others who wish to study invertebrate population trends in the South Puget Sound.
While the MaST is excited to have some quantitative data behind our sea slug populations, the best part of the team is still sharing in the excitement of discovering a new nudibranch –just recently, we found a Dendronotus iris, a beautifully branched nudibranch, mostly white and flecked with orange and purplish-brown. Staff and volunteers flocked to the aquarium to get a closer look at this nudibranch. It has been over a year and a half since the last time this species was spotted in one of our tanks!
The Marine Science and Technology Center is the marine laboratory of Highline College. Committed to increasing ocean literacy through community interaction, personal relations and exploration; the MaST strives to accomplish this through volunteer programs, formal college classes, and k-12 school programs.
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Author: Elise Pletcher is the Citizen Science and Volunteer Coordinator at the MaST Center in Des Moines WA, where she works alongside volunteers on the Jelly, Nudibranch, Marine Mammal, and Discovery Day volunteer teams.
by editor | Jun 20, 2017 | Marine/Aquatic Education
Mitigating Microplastics
Development and Evaluation of a Middle School Curriculum
by Marie Kowalski and Tracy Crews
ABSTRACT
Microplastics are plastic marine debris less than five millimeters across. Microplastics are a threat to the health of our ocean. One important way to reduce microplastics in our ocean is to educate people about the issue, particularly future decision-makers. A middle school curriculum was developed using current scientific data and evaluated using the Context, Input, Process, Product (CIPP) model. The curriculum includes lessons on sources, impacts, and solutions to microplastics. Students participating in the curriculum demonstrated detailed knowledge and awareness of microplastics as well as increased feelings of personal responsibility.
KEYWORDS
Microplastics, marine debris, curriculum, middle school, curriculum evaluation
INTRODUCTION
Our ocean is a valuable resource that provides important services including fisheries, recreation, and habitat for many organisms. The global health of our ocean is threatened by marine debris or litter in the ocean. Most marine debris is plastic (Thiel et al. 2013) and can range in size from abandoned boats to microplastics less than five millimeters across (Law and Thompson 2014). Marine debris is everywhere, and it is largely preventable through changes in people’s behaviors. Reducing marine debris, however, is a complex problem.
While picking up litter is important, education and scientific research are also critical components of reducing marine debris (Thompson, Moore, vom Saal, and Swan 2009). Awareness of marine issues is associated with feeling concern for the environment (Gelcich et al. 2014). Inspiring and empowering young people to take action is an important part of reducing marine debris.
This article describes a three-part middle school curriculum incorporating current research on microplastics. An overview of the curriculum development and evaluation is discussed. An excerpt from the curriculum is included with access to the full curriculum available online. While the curriculum was designed and evaluated with a formal middle school classroom in mind, the lesson activities can also be adapted for use in informal settings.
THE ISSUE WITH MICROPLASTICS
Sources and Sinks
It was estimated that more than five trillion pieces of plastic are floating in the ocean and over 90% are microplastics (Eriksen et al. 2014). Most marine debris (estimated 80%) originates on land (Derraik 2002). Microplastics primarily enter the ocean when larger plastic marine debris fragments (and small plastics) are directly deposited in the ocean (Browne 2015). Small plastics in personal care products such as some face washes and toothpastes, as well as plastic fibers in laundry lint, go down household drains and are not removed by water treatment facilities (Fendall and Sewell 2009).
PHOTO – Small plastic particles in personal care products called microbeads enter household drains and are not removed by water treatment facilities. Courtesy of Marie Kowalski.
Possible Impacts
Once in the ocean, the impacts of microplastics are largely unknown. Ongoing research has identified potential impacts such as the accumulation of toxins on the surface of microplastics (Mato et al. 2001) and organisms’ ingestion of plastics. Microbes have also been shown to colonize on the surface of microplastics, possibly being transported to new parts of the ocean or sinking plastic to deeper waters (Zettler, Mincer, and Amaral-Zettler 2013).
Organisms such as plankton (Cole et al. 2013) and filter feeders such as oysters (Van Cauwenberghe and Janssen 2014) have been reported to ingest microplastics along with several species of fish and seabirds (Codina-García, Militão, Moreno, and González-Solís 2013). The impacts of microplastics after consumption is unclear. Microplastics are found from the surface to the bottom of the ocean all over the world, making their impacts on the marine environment a global concern.
Solutions
For an issue that has no one solution, effective methods to address marine debris will require creativity and collaboration among many groups. Three categories of solutions include legislation, education, and individual actions.
- Legislation: The federal Microbead-Free Act of 2015 banned the manufacture and sale of personal care products with plastic microbeads.
- Education: Educating people about marine debris has the potential to inspire reduction of marine debris at multiple scales.
- Individual Actions: Individual actions such as recycling and avoiding plastic products can reduce our personal plastic contribution and inspire others to change, thereby having a larger impact.
CURRICULUM DESIGN
Inputs
The microplastics curriculum was created through the backwards planning design of Wiggins and McTighe (2005). Lessons were grounded in enduring understandings and learning objectives aligned with middle school Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and Ocean Literacy Principles (OLP). Lessons were developed using data provided by researchers working in the field.
Overview
The curriculum consists of three lessons designed for sixth through eighth grade students:
- “Bags, Bottles, and Beads: Sources of Microplastics”: Students investigate personal care products with microbeads, explore major sources of microplastics, and work with data on microplastics abundance in the Pacific Ocean.
- “Small Plastics, Big Problem”: Students simulate the fragmentation of plastic marine debris to determine how its surface area changes and then work with data from the Columbia River Estuary in Oregon to explore potential impacts of plastics in waterways.
- “Mitigating Microplastics”: Students work in groups to generate solutions to the problem of microplastics and implement their ideas. The curriculum available online contains a set of teacher lesson plans with aligned standards, materials, lesson outlines, extension and adaptation suggestions, and background content information. A presentation slide show is also available along with student handouts and an answer guide.
CURRICULUM EVALUATION
Evaluation Model
The evaluation of this curriculum was based on the Context, Input, Process, Product (CIPP) model (Stufflebeam and Coryn 2014). This model was chosen because of its flexibility and ability to be used as a model for both the formative and summative evaluation.
The goal of the formative evaluation was to get feedback on the initial curriculum from students and assess its usefulness to teachers. Data collected during the formative evaluation was used to revise the curriculum.
The goal of the summative evaluation was to evaluate the effectiveness of the final curriculum and document changes in participants. The summative evaluation was guided by two questions:
- To what extent do knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs change after participating in this microplastics curriculum?
- How does understanding and behavior change after participating in this microplastics curriculum?
Data Collection
Formative evaluation data was collected in two parts: pilot teaching and a teacher focus group. The pilot version of the curriculum was taught at two marine science summer camps with a total of 47 students between the ages of 12 and 15. Data on student questions and responses were collected via researcher fieldnotes and used to revise the curriculum. The revised curriculum was reviewed by agroup of four middle school teachers, a curriculum resource liaison, and a K-12 liaison at a marine education facility. A focus group was held to obtain feedback on the content, layout, usability, and likelihood that the curriculum would be used in the classroom. This feedback was also used to revise the curriculum.
Summative evaluation data was collected using pre- and post-surveys before the first lesson in the curriculum and after the last lesson of the curriculum was taught by the researcher. The survey was used with 110 students and three teachers in a total of seven classes. The concepts addressed in the survey included awareness, attitudes, beliefs, understanding, and behaviors, which are considered by Allen et al. (2008) to be components of science education “impact.” Data on student knowledge was collected using questions embedded in student materials.
Data Analysis
Quantitative data (awareness, attitudes, beliefs, numberof behaviors, and knowledge) was coded and analyzed in SPSS using descriptive and nonparametric statistical tests. Qualitative data (understanding, behaviors, and some knowledge items) was coded in Dedoose, a web application for mixed methods analysis, using a combination of in vivo (bottom up) coding and axial (top down) coding (Berg and Lune 2012).
Evaluation Results
The evaluation results are from the summative evaluation of the curriculum. Of the seven classes and 110 students who participated in the evaluation, 24% were in fifth or sixth grade, and 76% were in eighth grade. More than half (53%) of the students had not heard of microplastics before participating in the lessons.
Overall, eighth grade students scored higher on knowledge questions (defining marine debris and microplastics, articulating the abundance of microplastics, and explaining how surface area changes when an object fragments), with the exception of identifying sources of microplastics.
Additionally, all students struggled with explaining how the total surface area changed as marine debris fragmented over time. The mean score for students on this objective was 65%. The challenge was possibly due to the fact that Common Core State Standards do not include calculating the surface area until seventh grade or may reflect students’ reliance on mathematical formulas (Zacharos 2006). This section of the curriculum is most appropriate for students who are already familiar with calculating surface area.
The shifts in student misconceptions and types of behaviors suggest that the curriculum did get students thinking about the issue in a more accurate way, correcting some misconceptions.
Generally, attitudes about the scope and severity of the microplastics issue and beliefs that students could influence the problem increased after participating in the curriculum.
Students were more worried about the issue, but concern is important when combined with knowledge of solutionoriented behaviors. Self-efficacy was generally high among students, which can be an opportunity to engage them in creating and implementing solutions in the classroom and beyond. Selected evaluation results are highlighted in Table 1 below.
Concept Results
—Knowledge
Post lessons, students scored 80% or above on every objective, except in surface area students scored 65%.
—Behaviors
After the lessons, students did list more behaviors to reduce microplastics in the ocean than listed previously. The mean number of behaviors listed per student increased from 3.52 to 3.83.
Pre-survey behaviors were focused on managing waste (recycling and not littering).
Post-survey behaviors were focused on managing consumption (buying non-plastic items or reducing their use of plastics).
—Understanding
After the lessons, students tended to include fewer misconceptions (the mean number of misconceptions per student decrease from 0.51 in the pre-survey to 0.35 in the post survey) and more detailed explanations in their responses. Some students showed misconceptions after the lessons that all plastic floats and microplastics kill all marine life.
—Beliefs
Students tended to believe they could make a difference in the microplastics issue both before and after the lessons.
—Attitudes
After the lessons, students tended to:
- Be significantly more worried about the issue (p < .001, Z = 3.43)
- Think microplastics are a more challenging problem
- Be unsure about the impacts of microplastics on people
This middle school microplastics curriculum was developed and evaluated using formative and summative techniques. Because the curriculum was evaluated in a rural, coastal school district in Oregon, the results cannot be generalized to other communities.
In this context, however, the microplastics curriculum was effective in raising awareness, knowledge, and feelings of personal responsibility among students as well as developing more specific understanding of microplastics. The first lesson from this curriculum is outlined here, with images of the supporting student materials. The full curriculum is available online. A link is available in the resources section of this article.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards
ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems Human activities have significantly altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging or destroying natural habitats and causing the
extinction of other species. But changes to Earth’s environments can have different impacts (negative and positive) for different living things. (MS-ESS3-3)
Patterns Graphs, charts, and images can be used to identify patterns in data. (MS-ESS3-2)
Ocean Literacy
6.D Human activity contributes to changes in the ocean and atmosphere.
6.D.18 Pollutants move from the land into the ocean as water flows through watersheds via runoff and rivers.
Enduring Understandings
Everyone’s actions have an impact (both positive and negative) on the environment.
OBJECTIVES
- Students will define marine debris and microplastics
- Students will explain sources of microplastics
TIME
MATERIALS
- Two sealing jars for each group/pair
- Water (enough to fill each jar about half full)
- Liquid soap or face wash with microbeads
- Liquid soap or face wash with natural exfoliators
- Student notebook: “Bags, Bottles, and Beads”
- Sink
- Coffee filters
- Jar/bucket for microbead disposal
SET-UP
- Divide students into groups of 2-3
- With two jars for each group, label half the jars “A” and the other half “B”
- Place about a tablespoon of soap in each jar
- Soap with microbeads in jar “A”
- Soap with natural exfoliators in jar “B”
- Have a disposal jar/bucket for microbead soap when the activity is over
LESSON OUTLINE
Hook
Say: Look around the room and silently find as many plastic objects as you can in 10 seconds…go! Time students for 10 seconds, then have students share some of the objects they identified.
Ask: Raise your hand if you agree that there is a lot of plastic in this classroom? If you agree that we use a lot of plastic in our daily lives?
Say: We use plastic every day, and many of the plastics are single-use. They are designed to be thrown away after being used once. We might not realize which products have plastic, and we don’t always know what happens to them after they are thrown away.
Explore—”Soap, Suds, and…Plastic?”
Say: Some products with plastics might surprise you. First, we will talk a little about plastic itself, and then you will have a chance to investigate for yourself. Students complete guided notes in their notebooks.
Presentation: Slides include the text from the notebook with the blanks filled in.
Say: Polyethylene is the plastic most microbeads are made of, and you can identify products with microbeads by looking at the ingredients for polyethylene. Repeat after me, “polyethylene.”
Handout: an “A” and “B” jar to each student group, don’t tell them which soap is which.
LESSON PLAN EXCERPT
Students compare the size, shape, color, and any additional properties of the two soaps to determine which one contains plastic.
Courtesy of Marie Kowalski
ALTERNATIVE ACTIVITY
As an alternative to the first activity “Soap Suds and… Plastic,” consider completing the challenge using just face wash with natural exfoliators. Have students observe and draw the particles, and then explain that some soaps used to have plastic instead of the natural material. Ask students to imagine that those particles are plastic to get an idea of the number of microbeads that might enter the ocean from one product. Emphasize that there are other sources of microplastics that enter waterways, including plastic fibers from clothing.
Students read and follow the directions in their notebooks.
Presentation: Slides also have activity directions for reference.
- Students first make observations of the two jars (color, texture, size and shape of particles, etc.).
- Students fill jars halfway with water, close it tightly, and shake the jars to dissolve the soap (there shouldn’t be any soap stuck to the bottom).
- Students write down what they observe and draw pictures in their notebooks of how the particles behave inside the soaps. Students answer the questions in their notebooks.
Ask: What did you notice that was different between the two jars? How did the particles in the soaps behave? Which one do you think has plastic in it? What evidence do you have? Reveal the answer, that “A” has microplastics in it!
Misconception Alert! Plastic microbeads will float in the water, but not all microplastics float! Microplastics can be found at many depths, including the ocean floor. Before moving on to the next part of the lesson, clarify that while the plastic microbeads in the investigation floated, not all microplastics float in the ocean.
- Students read the “newspaper clipping” from their notebook and answer the question.
Discuss: Why is the problem of microplastics not solved? Do you think this is a helpful law? Why or why not?
Debrief: “How do microplastics make it to the ocean?”
Say: One of the reasons the microplastics problem is not solved by this law is that there are many other ways microplastics get into the ocean.
Presentation: Slides show “main sources of microplastics.” See student example for notes. Students complete guided notes from their notebooks.
Say: There are two main ways that microplastics enter the ocean. One is directly as small pieces (show microplastics definition and have a student read it aloud). Plastics in toothpaste, face wash, and laundry lint can go directly into the ocean. Most microplastics are from larger plastic marine debris items that are fragmented once they get to the ocean (show marine debris definition and have a student read it aloud). Nurdles are small plastic pieces used in factories to make plastic products.
Practice: “Real Researcher: Angel White”
Say: Now that we know about microplastics and where they come from, we are going to learn about a researcher who studies microplastics.
This diagram describes the flow of the curriculum evaluation, beginning with the needs assessment and ending with the dissemination of the curriculum. Courtesy of Marie Kowalski
Students will read “Real Researcher: Angel White” from their student notebook as an introduction to her data. Students will answer the questions about Angel’s data. See student example for correct responses. Answers are based on the data table and reading.
Ask: Why do you think scientists study microplastics in the ocean? What should scientists like Angel do with their results?
Clean Up
To keep microbeads from going down the sink drain, you can use a coffee filter to remove the microbeads from the soap. You can dry them and put them in a container to show the amount of plastic in the product!
RESOURCES
Curriculum
Mitigating Microplastics: http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/mitigating-microplastics-teacher-lesson-planscurriculum
Marine Debris
NOAA Marine Debris Program: http://marinedebris.noaa. gov/info/plastic.html
Study on the abundance of plastic marine debris: http:// journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111913
Article on plastic fibers in laundry: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/10/laundry-lint-pollutes-worlds-oceans
Evaluation
National Science Foundation Report: www.nsf.gov/od/broadeningparticipation /framework-evaluating-impactsbroadening-participation-projects_1101.pdf
REFERENCES
Allen, S., P.B. Campbell, L.D. Dierking, B.N. Flagg, C. Garibay, R. Korn, D.A. Ucko. (2008). Framework for Evaluating Impacts of Informal Science Education Projects. (A. J. Friedman, Ed.). National Science Foundation. Retrieved from http://informalscience.org/documents/Eval_Framework.pdf
Berg, B.L., and H. Lune. (2012). Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Browne, M.A. (2015). Sources and pathways of microplastics to habitats. In Marine Anthropogenic Litter. M. Bergmann, L. Gutow, and M. Klages (Eds.). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
Codina-García, M., T. Militão, J. Moreno, and J. González-Solís. (2013). Plastic debris in Mediterranean seabirds. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 77(1-2): 220-226. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2013.10.002
Cole, M., P. Lindeque, E. Fileman, C. Halsband, R. Goodhead, J. Moger, and T.S. Galloway. (2013). Microplastic ingestion by zooplankton. Environmental Science & Technology, 47(12): 6646–6655. http://doi.org/10.1021/es400663f
Derraik, J.G.B. (2002). The pollution of the marine environment by plastic debris: A review. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 44(9): 842-852. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0025-326X(02)00220-5
Eriksen, M., L.C.M. Lebreton, H.S. Carson, M. Thiel, C.J. Moore, J.C. Borerro, and J. Reisser. (2014). Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans: More than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea. PLoS ONE, 9(12): e111913. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111913
Fendall, L.S., and M.A. Sewell. (2009). Contributing to marine pollution by washing your face: Microplastics in facial cleansers. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 58(8): 1225-1228. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2009.04.025
Gelcich, S., P. Buckley, J.K. Pinnegar, J. Chilvers, I. Lorenzoni, G. Terry, and C.M. Duarte. (2014). Public awareness, concerns, and priorities about anthropogenic impacts on marine environments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(42): 15042-15047. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417344111
Glatthorn, A.A., F. Boschee, B.M. Whitehead, and B.F. Boschee. (2015). Curriculum Leadership: Strategies for Development and Implementation (4th ed.). New York, NY: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Law, K.L., and R.C. Thompson. (2014). Microplastics in the seas. Science, 345(6193): 144-145. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1254065
Mato, Y., T. Isobe, H. Takada, H. Kanehiro, C. Ohtake, and T. Kaminuma. (2001). Plastic resin pellets as a transport medium for toxic chemicals in the marine environment. Environmental Science & Technology, 35(2): 318-324. http://doi.org/10.1021/es0010498
Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, 21 U.S.C. § 301.
Thiel, M., I.A. Hinojosa, L. Miranda, J.F. Pantoja, M.M. Rivadeneira, and N. Vásquez. (2013). Anthropogenic marine debris in the coastal environment: A multi-year comparison between coastal waters and local shores. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 71(1–2):307-316. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2013.01.005
Thompson, R. C., C.J. Moore, F.S. vom Saal, and S.H. Swan. (2009). Plastics, the environment and human health: Current consensus and future trends. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1526): 2153-2166. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0053
Van Cauwenberghe, L., and C.R. Janssen. (2014). Microplastics in bivalves cultured for human consumption. Environmental Pollution, 193: 65-70. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2014.06.010
Wiggins, G., and J. McTighe. (2005). Understanding by Design (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Zacharos, K. (2006). Prevailing educational practices for area measurement and students’ failure in measuring areas. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 25(3):224-239. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2006.09.003
Zettler, E. R., T.J. Mincer, and L.A. Amaral-Zettler. (2013). Life in the “plastisphere”: Microbial communities on plastic marine debris. Environmental Science & Technology, 47(13): 7137-7146. http://doi.org/10.1021/es401288x
MARIE KOWALSKI is a recent graduate of the Marine Resource Management program at Oregon State University. Her research interests include incorporating authentic science in classroom settings and communicating marine science.
TRACY CREWS oversees Oregon Sea Grant’s marine education programs at Hatfield Marine Science Center. Tracy holds a bachelor of science degree in marine biology, a master of science degree in marine science, and has worked in fisheries research, resource management, and education for over 25 years.
This article originally appeared in Currents, the journal of the National Marine Educators Association. Reprinted with permission.
by editor | Oct 19, 2016 | Marine/Aquatic Education
An Interview with Rus Higley
2016 Marine Education Classroom Educator of the Year
Rus Higley has worked as Manager at the Marine Science and Technology Center at Highline College since its opening in 2003. He was born in Alaska, but grew up in Des Moines and graduated from Western Washington University with a B.S. in Marine Biology. He then went on to get his M.S. in Curriculum & Instruction from Old Dominion, and Master of Marine Affairs from the University of Washington. Besides managing the MaST Center, Rus teaches classes at Highline College in Marine Biology, Environmental Sciences and Oceanography, and teaches Environmental Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma.
Rus Higley was recently named the 2016 Marine Educator of the Year by the Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators (NAME).
Congratulations on being named the 2016 Outstanding Classroom Educator by NAME. So what led you to becoming an environmental educator in the first place?
After college, I joined Peace Corps where I taught science to high school students and worked at a catfish hatchery. While doing that I learned that I enjoyed teaching and so have continued to develop opportunities. When I returned to the Northwest, I had a non-teaching position with Highline College. Shortly, after I started, I got a call from the VP for instruction who knew my background and had an oceanography class without an instructor…the catch was it started in 3 days. 17 years later I’m still teaching!
Did you have a specific experience as a child that connected you to the natural world?
I’m originally from Sitka, Alaska and spent most of my childhood summers up there. My friends and I always played on the beach looking for animals, getting stuck in the mud, and fishing. It always seemed like the only choice.
What are you working on right now?
In addition to everything else, I’m working with Washington SCUBA Alliance on the creation of an artificial reef for divers here in Redondo, WA. A recent meeting with Senator Karen Kaiser gave us a lot of hope for this to move forward. Part of the motivation for this is that the state is removing toxic materials, such as pilings and tires, from the Puget Sound. Although a long term gain for the health of the Puget Sound, it is a short term loss of some beautiful habitat and dive sites. This reef would use natural materials to build appropriate structures for local marine life. One big aspect we are working on is the research that is needed to show that this in truly a “good” idea, so we are working to develop a suitable research program to look at the diversity of life both before and after it is built.
What is your favorite part of your job?
If you’d asked me 10-15 years ago to describe my perfect job, except for the warm and tropical part, I’ve got it. Not only do I get to teach oceanography and marine biology to college students, I get to run an amazing community sized marine aquarium. The MaST Center is a 3,000 gallon aquarium facility for Highline College that not only has college classes but brings in thousands of school kids and thousands of visitors every year. Our small crew of staff and volunteers have done so many amazing things and continue to push the limits.
Can you share a story about a project that worked really well, or a particular student you remember?
Over this fall quarter, as the technical advisor, I am working with the Foss Waterway Seaport and Tacoma Public Schools to articulate a 23 foot gray whale skeleton. We started this project last Christmas, when it was found dead on the beach. Since then, we’ve conducted a necropsy, flensed the meat off, composted the bones, and are now articulating the skeleton. The work is being done by 15 Stadium High School students who during the quarter have talked to an engineer about the structural limitations including a proposed “pose” for the animals, an ethical conversation on whether it should or should not be named, a naturopathic doctor to compare human and whale bones, the lead scientist for the necropsy to help determine why it died. While all of that has been going on, the students are literally putting the whale together.
[Note: Check out The Tacoma News Tribune article on this project]
What are your biggest concerns about the state of marine/aquatic education today?
Most kids have a passion for the ocean but it is limited to whales, sea turtles, and Nemo. My biggest concern and goal is taking that passion and using it to grow them into educated citizens and maybe even a scientist.
You’re a strong advocate for environmental justice. How do you incorporate that into the work you’re currently doing?
Highline College is one of the most diverse colleges in America and serves in South King County one of the most diverse populations. Helping people realize that they are a part of the environment and need to take ownership for their choices is really important. Much of our outreach is focusing on the non-traditional “student”. As a teacher, working with students to explore ideas like internal and external cost. For example last year, one of my classes dug really deeply into a proposed methanol plant in Tacoma which was eventually cancelled before being built.
Do you have any advice for someone starting out in this field?
Build your résumé. My daughter is a sophomore in college where it is easy to get lost especially at the larger schools. Being in the top 10% of a class of 500 students does not stand out. What else have you done? Referring back to the whale, imagine the resume of the Stadium High School students who took all these great classes AND BUILT A WHALE! Get connected with your teachers and professionals as they often know of opportunities that you may not have heard of. Also, find your dream job(s). If you don’t know where you want to be in 10 years, it’s hard to work for that. Even though I’m not looking for a new job and in fact love my job, I have literally over a hundred job descriptions of possible jobs for me in the future. Every time I see a job description that sounds interesting, I save it in my file. Also get on professional organizations and look for their job boards. For example, if you want to work in an aquarium, the Association of Zoos and Aquarium job/internship board has opportunities from all over.
Where do you find inspiration for the work you do?
The students are an obvious answer and are some of my biggest inspiration. Seeing them make the connections, seeing them open their eyes to a new thing or way of thinking, is amazing. Also, I try to keep current in the field to help motivate me to continue to push myself.
What is your favorite resource or tool for teaching marine science?
The web has so many real time, global sized resources. One of my new favorite visualizations for the planet is earth.nullschool.net which has a nearly real time model of wind, temperature, ocean currents, etc.
What’s your favorite marine creature?
Like a lot of divers in the Pacific Northwest, I love the octopuses. Any dive that finds an octopus is a good dive. At my marine center, we have the opportunity to work with several animals for long periods of time. Watching them grow, learn how to recognize people, and play is amazing. Last year, I even took an octopus to prison for a talk on octopus intelligence. I also generally dive with our octopus during our Octopus Graduation event where we release them back into the Puget Sound and follow them with a streaming camera so the audience can watch real time on the surface. Google “octopus graduation” and you can find some of the old videos.
Where do you go when you want to recharge your batteries?
I’m a river rafter and have been guiding for over 20 years. Getting on the river feeds me. This past August, my wife and I, along with a group of friends, spent 18 days rafting the Grand Canyon. Although a challenging experience, living on “river time” changes the way I look at things.
Do you have a favorite place to visit in the Pacific Northwest?
We love to go camping and two of my favorites are Cape Disappointment which is down by the mouth of the Columbia River and Salt Creek Recreation Area up by Port Angeles. Both feature the ocean but are significantly different environments.
Are you reading any great books at the moment?
I’m currently working on Energy for Future Presidents by Muller. Although I don’t agree with everything he says, he really works to try to make honest comparisons and has me reevaluating some of my opinions. For example, how does solar power compare to nuclear to natural gas. I’d really love to have a follow up conversation with him because I think he glosses over some of those external costs.
Another favorite is Shell Games by Craig Welch who explores the illegal trade of geoducks here in the Puget Sound area. It’s a factual book that reads like a crime fiction novel.
And finally, who do you consider your environmental heroes?
Rachel Carson whose work Silent Spring played a role in the start of the modern environmental movement. Her science was amazing and her strength to stand up to all the people who thought women can’t be scientists continues to inspire me.
Nowadays, Elon Musk and his push for game changing improvements in alternative energies. We need people to think big.
Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.
Thanks for including me in your great publication. Being recognized for doing the stuff I love is a true honor.
# # #
Open every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to the public, the MaST Center, mast.highline.edu, is located at 28203 Redondo Beach Drive S.—halfway between Seattle and Tacoma and about 5 minutes south of the main Highline Campus.
Ear to the Ground is a regular feature of CLEARING. Check the website for previous interviews.
by editor | Mar 25, 2015 | Indigenous Peoples & Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Marine/Aquatic Education, STEM
CMOP: The Best Environmental Education Program You’ve (Probably) Never Heard About
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Coastal Margin Science and Education in the Era of Collaboratories
by Vanessa L. Green, Nievita Bueno Watts, Karen Wegner, Michael Thompson, Amy F. Johnson, Tawnya D. Peterson and António M. Baptista
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nterdisciplinary science is needed to make big decisions when it comes to complex and fragile ecological environments such as the Columbia River estuary. Effective communication of that science is necessary to engage students and to work across scientists, educators. policy-makers and the general community. For these reasons, the Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction (CMOP) has developed a “coastal margin collaboratory,” which brings together sensor networks, computer models, cyber-infrastructure, people and institutions to better understand the Columbia River coastal margin ecosystem as a whole (Baptista et al. 2008).
CMOP scientists study the Columbia River and transform the openly shared data and tools into a better understanding of current conditions and into the anticipation of future trends from increasing climate and anthropogenic pressures. Many types of users access CMOP data for their own needs and/or collaborate with CMOP on joint scientific and educational efforts. Through the collaboratory, CMOP enables a common understanding among interested groups such as natural resource managers for local, state, federal and tribal agencies, enabling effective discussions and long-range planning.
WHAT ARE COASTAL MARGINS?
Coastal margins, broadly defined as the interface between land and ocean, contain important and highly productive ecosystems. They often mitigate the negative impacts of human activities from local to global scales, for example ‘filtering out’ excess nutrients that enter watersheds from fertilizer applications. Coastal margin environments are naturally variable because of tides, seasons and year-to- year differences in the forcing from rivers, oceans, and the atmosphere. Ecosystems adapt to that natural variability, but are often less well equipped to adjust to major shifts caused by population growth, economic development and global climate change. CMOP seeks to understand how biological and chemical components of the Columbia River interface with and are affected by physical processes, with the ultimate goal of predicting how they might respond to climate change and increased regional development.
A recent study (Frontier Economics Limited 2012) estimates that the world’s ten most populated river basins account today for l0% of the global gross domestic product, and that by 2050 that share will grow Io 25%, which will be more than the combined gross domestic product of the United States, Germany and Japan. This type of growth could be ecologically devastating, locally and globally, should it not be managed in a perspective of long-term sustainability and with the support of sound science. The datasets and predictions provided by the CMOP collaboratory can serve as useful examples that can be “exported” to other similar river and estuary systems worldwide.
THE COLUMBIA RIVER-TO-OCEAN ECOSYSTEM
The Columbia River watershed extends across seven states in the United States and two provinces in Canada, and contributes about 70% of the freshwater input to the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Juan de Fuca (Barnes et al. 1972). Big decisions are needed to determine policy about the hydroelectric dams, protection and regulation of the migratory salmon, and changes in water quality such as ocean-driven estuarine hypoxia and acidification. All of this is set in the context of continued population growth, economic development and climatic change-and amidst a complex regulatory environment that includes the Endangered Species Act, a federal treaty between the U.S government and Native American tribes, and a soon-to-be renegotiated treaty between the U.S. and Canada.
CMOP science has already led to the identification of previously unrecognized environmental issues, from a benign but ecologically relevant seasonal red water bloom in the Columbia River estuary (Hertfort et aI. 2012) to the development of seasonal and severe ocean-driven estuarine hypoxia (Roegner et al. 2011) and potential acidification- and is showing how those apparently distinct processes are tied together. CMOP science is also contributing to an understanding of anthropogenic and climatic changes to estuarine and ocean processes, which affect salmon habitat and life cycle.
THE CMOP EDUCATIONAL PATHWAY
Progress towards our scientific goals has opened exciting opportunities to entrain a new and diverse workforce in coastal margin science. CMOP offers an educational pathway that includes a broad range of age-appropriate activities for students and teachers. Our pathway includes short courses; camps; sustained professional development programs for teachers; curricula for high school classes; individualized research experiences through high school, undergraduate and teacher internships; interdisciplinary graduate curricula through Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and affiliated degree programs at partner universities; and lifelong opportunities for scientists and natural resources professionals to incorporate outcomes of CMOP science in their activities and decision-making processes (Figure 2).
From left, Sam Case third-grade teacher Fanny Drews, Newport Intermediate fifth-grade teacher Christie Walker, Taft Elementary fifth-grade teacher Valerie Baker and sixth-grade teachers Beth Parsons and Kara Allen identify microbes that live on marine debris. Photo courtesy of NewsGuard of Lincoln County, Oregon.
Teachers and informal educators engage with CMOP in a variety of ways. Teachers access data through user-friendly modules that can be used to plot time series and explore correlations between estuary variables. As an example, teachers could design an experiment that demonstrates how red water blooms influence dissolved oxygen levels, using CMOP’s models to explore various scenarios. CMOP offers a regularly updated activity archive on the CMOP website (Science Activities and Curriculum URL). Lessons are designed for adaptability between age groups and data are appropriate for math, science, and social science classrooms. These lesson plans align with the essential principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Generation Science Standards (Ocean Literacy Guide URL) and were generated through an interactive teacher professional development workshop. Teachers can engage in individualized internships of their own, conducting original research within CMOP teams and incorporating their experiences into their classroom curricula.
A three-year collaboration of the Oregon Coast Aquatic and Marine Partnership (OCAMP) consisting of CMOP, the Lincoln County School District, Hatfield Marine Science Center, Oregon Sea Grant, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife/Oregon Hatchery Research Center, the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and the Bureau of Land Management’s Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area aimed to provide teachers with the tools needed to carry out meaningful field experiences and inquiry driven learning while improving ocean literacy during sustained, year-round professional development colloquia as well as summer workshops. A follow-up program, entitled the Oregon Coast Regional STEM Center, extended OCAMP’s partnership to include Tillamook School District, Western Oregon University, and a variety of local businesses and agencies, and seeks to support teachers in their use of problem-based learning to improve student outcomes in STEM disciplines through engagement and the incorporation of 2lst century skills. The latter program is being carried out in a blended model of professional development, with in-person and web-based activities. CMOP can also engage with an entire school community through the CMOP- School Collaboratories (CSC) program. Cohorts of teachers from CSC partner schools can engage with CMOP to develop an integrated curriculum that emphasizes an inter-connected environment (Hugo et al. 2013).
THE VALUE OF A SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CENTER
The structure of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center program (NSF STC) has greatly enabled the development of this educational pathway through the decade-long investment in exploratory yet rigorous, potentially transformative science. lt is this structure that allows CMOP to expose students to a multi-disciplinary approach, engaging scientists from a broad range of relevant fields and from several collaborating universities, as well as practitioners from many state, federal and tribal agencies and from industry. The longevity of the STC investment has also contributed to our ability to effectively engage in sustained efforts to broaden participation among Native American, Alaska Native (Bueno Watts and Smythe 2015) and other groups underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) disciplines.
The synergy among anchoring academic partners (OHSU, Oregon State University and University of Washington, in the case of CMOP) is critically important to the success of a STC. Also critical is the engagement of regional stakeholders, which offer a natural, realistic, enriching and often pressing context for our science and education programs. For instance, Native American tribes of the Columbia River have historically been active and effective stewards of the land, water and natural resources in the basin. The Columbia River lnter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) has partnered with CMOP to identify potential threats to salmon and lamprey through investigation of factors that influence habitat quality. This collaboration has effectively engaged several Native American students in the CMOP education pathway and has also educated non-Native students on tribal cultures and natural resource management strategies.
DEVELOPING THE COASTAL MARGIN WORKFORCE
CMOP students are engaged at all levels of the collaboratory. They participate in the development of sensors and models, and take active part in oceanographic cruises that might range from research to mariner-training vessels, autonomous underwater vehicles (Figure 3) and even kayaks (Rathmell et al. 2013). CMOP students, from high school to graduate, conduct research projects that relate to important biological hotspots, attempting holistic descriptions of their underlying physics and biogeochemistry that cover gene-to-climate scales. Students learn, shoulder-to-shoulder with researchers and practitioners, how to characterize, predict and inter-relate processes driving estuarine hypoxia and acidification. plankton blooms, and the biogeochemistry of lateral bays and of estuarine turbidity maxima (ETM)-turbid water regions located at the heads of coastal plain estuaries near the freshwater/saltwater interface. CMOP students also gain an understanding of broad topics that provide context to CMOP research science initiatives, such as global nutrient cycles, climate change, managing natural resources, mitigating natural hazards, and protecting fragile ecosystems.
Within the curriculum or with their mentor teams, students conduct fieldwork in the Columbia River estuary and in the coastal waters of Oregon and Washington using a variety of approaches, ranging from simple river-front water sampling from a dock to participation in major research campaigns aboard University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) vessels. Students gain hands-on experience within laboratories, using state-of-the-art equipment such as imaging flow cytometers (FlowCAM), an Environmental Sample Processor (ESP), a Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth Sensor (CTD), or a Scanning Electron Microscope. Students also gain exposure to the “Virtual Columbia River,” a data-rich simulation environment that offers multiple representations of circulation and ecological processes, including their variability and change across river-to-shelf scales (Virtual Columbia River URL). The models that form the Virtual Columbia River simulate estuarine conditions, enabling predictions of changing physical properties (tides, currents, salinity and temperature) and biogeochemical cycles (e.g., nitrogen and carbon) important to ecosystem management. Comparisons between field observations and model simulations allow for continued learning and refinement of the process.
INCORPORATING CMOP SCIENCE INTO THE CLASSROOM
Curricula available on the CMOP website combine elements of coastal oceanography, environmental microbiology, biogeochemistry, computational sciences, and information technology. Student participants in K-12 activities have continued working with CMOP, ‘graduating” to more sophisticated, longer-term participation as undergraduate interns. Likewise, undergraduate interns have continued their research by matriculating into the CMOP-affiliated M.S./Ph.D. Environmental Science and Engineering degree program offered through the lnstitute of Environmental Health (IEH) at OHSU. IEH graduates have gone on to related careers in academia, private research, and with related federal and state agencies. To date, CMOP has served over 800 K-l2 students, over 70 teachers, over 100 undergraduate students, and has graduated 28 M.S. and Ph.D. students. CMOP students have graduated from the Environmental Science and Engineering Program at Oregon Health & Science University; the Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Program at Oregon State University; the Computer Science program at Portland State University; the Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences program at the University of Maryland; the Computer Science program at the University of Utah; the Physical Oceanography Program and the Biological Oceanography Program at the University of Washington. Students who have engaged in the CMOP Education “pathway” have become citizen scientists with a nuanced knowledge of coastal-margin science issues, and many have gained expertise and skills that have enabled them to contribute to a growing professional workforce in coastal margin science.
For middle- and high-school students, CMOP offers classes. day-camps and high-school internships in partnership with Saturday Academy, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing hands-on, in-depth learning and problem-solving activities. Past topics have included microbiology, marine biology, oceanography, and ocean technology. The curriculum is designed to enable students to easily identify the importance of coastal-margin related issues to their own academic interests and personal lives.
Undergraduate interns join CMOP mentor teams, which include a “Frontline Mentor” and a “senior Scientist.” The Frontline Mentor-typically a graduate student, staff member or post-doctoral fellow-establishes a project relevant to one or more CMOP research initiative. The Senior Scientist mentor provides guidance and ensures academic caliber. Over the course of the ten-week program, interns gain autonomy within their mentor teams as they gain contextual knowledge and skills. lnterns regularly interact with each other and with other CMOP participants through professional development seminars encompassing scientific themes, career opportunities and scientific ethics. lnterns visit sites along the river from Bonneville Dam to downtown Portland and to the mouth of the Columbia River estuary, to gain a first-hand understanding and appreciation of the complex interactions of biological, chemical, and physical processes. lnterns document their work through a daily lab notebook, a weekly blog (Undergraduate lnternships URL), a final presentation and a synthesizing paper. lntern research projects have been thoroughly incorporated into CMOP research; interns have co-authored CMOP publications in peer-reviewed journals (Publications URL) and have presented at national and international conferences (Presentations URL).
ASSESSING IMPACT
The CMOP Education program seeks to make full use of the resources available to this NSF STC to enable a wide range of teachers, students, and other users to learn more about and contribute to place-based knowledge of coastal margins. The University of Washington’s Office of Educational Assessment regularly evaluates the effectiveness of our program. Evaluations include surveys and focus groups with each participant cohort as well as follow-up surveys for longitudinal data. Data analyses demonstrate that high school and undergraduate participants in CMOP programs have increased interest in STEM education; increased confidence in their ability to engage in STEM research; enhanced relevant technical and professional skills, and, for undergraduate students, clarified research foci both within their degree programs and related to their decision of graduate programs. Eighty-seven percent of undergraduate survey respondents who obtained bachelor degrees went on to matriculate into STEM graduate programs, 4O% in fields related to their internships. All of these graduates agreed or strongly agreed that “Being part of the [CMOP] summer internship strengthened my application to this graduate degree program.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CMOP is primarily supported by the National Science Foundation, through cooperative agreement OCE-O4246O2. Crant CEO-I034611 extended our CSC program to Native Alaskans.
REFERENCES
Baptista, A., Howe, B., Freire, J., Maier, D., & Silva, C. T. (2008).
Scientific exploration in the era of ocean observatories. Computing in Science & Engineering, l0 (3),53-58.
Barnes, C. A., Duxbury, A. C., and Morse, B. (1972). Circulation and selected properties of the Columbia River effluent at sea. ln: The Columbio River Estuory and Adjocent Oceon Woters: Bioenvironmental Studies, edited by A.T. Pruter and D.L. Alverson. Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 71-80.
Bueno Watts, N. & Smythe, W F. (2013). It takes a community to raise a scientist:A case for community-inspired research and science education in an Alaska Native community. Current: The Journal of Morine Educotion 2B(3).
Frontier Economics Limited. (2012). Exploring the links between woter ond economic growth: A report prepared for HSBC. London, England: Frontier Economics Limited.
Herfort, 1., Peterson, T. D., Prahl, F. C., McCue, L. A., Needoba, J. A., Crump, B. C., Roegner, C. C., Campbell, V., & Zuber, P. QO12). Red waters of Myrionecto rubrq are biogeochemical hotspots for the Columbia River estuary with impacts on primary/secondary productions and nutrient cycles. Estuories ond Coqsts,35 (3), B7B-891.
Hugo, R., Smythe, W., McAllister, S., Young, B., Maring, B. & Baptista, A. (2013). Lessons learned from a K-’12 geoscience education program in an Alaska Native community. Journal of Sustainability Education,5 (SSN 2-51:7452).
Ocean Literacy Cuide URL http:,/www.coexploration.orgl ocean literacy/documents/Ocea n LitC u ide_LettersizeV2.pdf
Presentations URL http://www.stccmop.orglknowledge_transfer/presentations
Publications URL http://www.stccmop.orglpublications
Rathmell, K., Wilkin, M., Welle, P., Mattson, T., & Baptista, A. (2015). A very smart kayak. Current: The Journal of Marine Education QB)3.
Roegner, C. C., Needoba, J. A., & Baptista, A. (20I). Coastal upwelling supplies oxygen-depleted water to the Columbia River estuary. PLoS ONE, 6 @), e18672.
doi:1O.137 1 /journal.pone.00l 8672
Science Activities and Curriculum URL http://www.stccmop.org/education/teacher/activityarchive
Undergraduate lnternships URL http://www.stccmop.org/education/undergraduate
Virtual Columbia River URL http://www.stccmop.org/datamart/virtualcolumbiariver
AUTHORS
Vanessa L. Green M.S. serves as Director of Student Development and Diversity at the NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction. Having earned a M.S. in Higher Education Administration she has focused her career on broadening participation and increasing engagement, persistence and retention among first-generation and underrepresented students in high school, undergraduate and graduate programs. She served as a founding faculty member and Dean of Students at the King George School in Vermont and served as a member of the Board of Trustees at Marlboro College. She currently serves on the Education and Outreach Steering Committee for the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere lnvestigations (C-DEBI).
Nievita Bueno Watts Ph.D. is a geotogist, science educator and Director of Academic Programs at the NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction. She conducts research on broadening the participation of underrepresented minorities in the sciences and serves on the Board of Directors of the Geoscience Alliance, a national organization dedicated to building pathways for Native American participation in the geosciences.
Karen Wegner MSW was rhe first Director for K-12 Education for the NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction. She brought years of experience as a wildlife biologist and environmental educator to CMOP. Along with education partners Saturday Academy and the SMILE Program she developed K-12 programs initially offered at CMOP. She credits the success of the K-12 program to the fantastic support offered by CMOP researches and students. Karen is now a Palliative Care Social Worker and Program Manager in Montana.
Michael Thompson Ph.D. is the Education and Outreach Coordinator at the NSF Science ahd Technology Center for Coastal Margin and Observation. He has an M.S. in Biochemistry and a PhD in Chemical Education with a focus in Engineering Education. He has been instrumental in the establishment of the EPICS High-school program, development and implementation of teacher training workshops, STEM learning communities for undergraduates, and service-learning experiences for high-school and undergraduate students.
Amy F. Johnson M.S, serves as the Managing Director for the NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction. Having earned an M.S. in Management in Science and Technology, she has years of experience managing in science and technology companies and education institutions. Prior to joining CMOP she was the Assistant Dean for Craduate Education at the OCI School of Science & Engineering at the Oregon Health & Science University.
Tawnya D. Peterson Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Environmental Health at Oregon Health & Science University. She holds a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography and carries out research that seeks to identify the factors that shape planktonic community diversity and function in aquatic systems. ln addition to scientific research, she is interested in the development and implementation of professional development programs for K-l2 teachers.
Antonio M. Baptista Ph.D. is a professor and director of the lnstitute of Environmental Health, Oregon Health & Science University and the director of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction. He has 25 years of experience in team science and graduate-level teaching, and uses leading edge coastal-margin science and technology as a catalyst for informed management decisions, workforce development and broadening participation.
PHOTO CREDITS
All Photos: Courtesy of CMOP staff member Jeff Schilling
Reprinted from Current, the Journal of the National Marine Education Association