DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38181
title: Socio-Environmental Science Investigations Using the Geospatial Curriculum Approach with Web Geospatial Information Systems, Pennsylvania, 2016-2020
title: Archival Version

description: This Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) project has developed, implemented, and evaluated a series of innovative Socio-Environmental Science Investigations (SESI) using a geospatial curriculum approach. It is targeted for economically disadvantaged 9th grade high school students in Allentown, PA, and involves hands-on geospatial technology to help develop STEM-related skills. SESI focuses on societal issues
related to environmental science. These issues are multi-disciplinary, involve decision-making that is based on the analysis of merged scientific and sociological data, and have direct implications for the social agency and equity milieu faced by these and other school students. This project employed a design partnership between Lehigh University natural science, social science, and education professors, high school science and social studies teachers, and STEM professionals in the local community to develop geospatial investigations with Web-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS). These were designed to provide students with geospatial skills, career awareness, and motivation to pursue appropriate education pathways for STEM-related occupations, in addition to building a more geographically and scientifically literate citizenry. The learning activities provide opportunities for students to collaborate, seek evidence, problem-solve, master technology, develop geospatial thinking and reasoning skills, and practice communication skills that are essential for the STEM workplace and beyond. Despite the accelerating growth in geospatial industries and congruence across STEM, few school-based programs integrate geospatial technology within their curricula, and even fewer are designed to promote interest and aspiration in the STEM-related occupations that will maintain American prominence in science and technology.
The SESI project is based on a transformative curriculum approach for
geospatial learning using Web GIS to develop STEM-related skills and promote STEM-related career interest in students who are traditionally underrepresented in STEM-related fields. This project attends to a significant challenge in
STEM education: the recognized deficiency in quality locally-based and relevant
high school curriculum for under-represented students that focuses on local social issues related to the environment. Environmental issues have great societal relevance, and because many environmental problems have a disproportionate impact on underrepresented and disadvantaged groups, they provide a compelling subject of study for students from these groups in
developing STEM-related skills. Once piloted in the relatively challenging
environment of an urban school with many unengaged learners, the results will be readily transferable to any school district to enhance geospatial reasoning skills nationally.
description: The student sample is a convenience sample obtained via an urban school district local to the researchers, specifically three local high schools. Two traditional high schools provided responses forming a control group and a third, newly established high school served as the experimental test group.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Y1 Data
DS2: Y1 Feedback
DS3: Y2 Data
DS4: Y2 Scores
DS5: Y3 Data
DS6: Y3 Feedback
description: Economically disadvantaged high school freshman in an urban school district.
description: mixed mode; on-site questionnaire; web-based survey