With ESSC, students and educators learn how to investigate the Earth as a system using the appropriate scientific data, tools, and techniques.
Students also learn how to evaluate and publish the results of their team research on the Web.
In their effort to create a high school curriculum for Earth system science, the founders of ESSC's Web site recognized that conventional methods and tools by which science has been taught in the classroom, such as lectures and textbooks, and the methods and tools by which science is really practiced, are largely incongruent. There is a discontinuity between how students are supposed to learn in the classroom and how they are expected to work and communicate in their professional communities. In many ways, this discontinuity characterizes the systemic problems in science education today. The challenge to Earth system science is to develop the capability to understand the changes that will occur in the next decade to century, both naturally and in response to human activity. From the ESSC homepage, visitors are able to review curriculum materials, including projects, syllabi, educational strategies, and student reports.