Beyond a few platitudes about objectivity and willingness to change one's mind, students learn a restricted stereotype about observation, simplification to tease apart controlling variables, crucial experiment, and prediction with repetition as a test. Thus, when students later confront history, where complex events occur but once in detailed glory, they can only conclude that such a subject must be less than science. The commonly held image of science that is reinforced in our classrooms is that of controlled laboratory experiments conducted by a balding man wearing a white lab coat. Earth Systems Education efforts also take a constructivist approach to learning both in workshops conducted by the staff and in the curriculum restructuring efforts. Most learning goes on in small collaborative groups working on real issues and problems dealing with the Earth System.
Teachers are the curriculum developers.
Other individuals, be they university professors, professional association staff, state or local level administrators, serve a facilitating function. It is a required sequence replacing both Earth science at the 9th grade and Biology at 10th. The sequence is organized around basic Earth systems issues such as resource supply, global climate change, and deforestation. The program incorporates collaborative learning and problem-solving techniques as major instructional strategies. Ten additional Ohio and New York school systems are now studying the BESS program for its implications for their curriculum restructuring efforts.