ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Mineral Resources in Mobile Phones: A Case Study of Boston and Vienna Teachers and Students
Author: Bookhagen, Britta
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Outreach Programs,Sustainability,Mineralogy,Telecommunications,Handheld Devices,Learning Modules,Case Studies,Workshops,Faculty Development,Cross Cultural Studies,Questionnaires,Program Effectiveness,Interdisciplinary Approach,Grade 7,Grade 8,Grade 9,Grade 10,Grade 11,Qualitative Research,Statistical Analysis

As part of an outreach initiative by the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria, an interdisciplinary educational module was developed to teach students about sustainability through the lens of mineral resources used to produce mobile phones. The overall goal of the module is to provide teachers of different subjects with a multifaceted tool to include sustainability in their classrooms and create greater awareness of our resource-rich lifestyle. The evaluation of efficacy and impact of the module in formal classroom environments is facilitated through two case studies: an assessment of teacher experiences across Austria with our teaching kit, and an assessment of student learning in Austria and the U.S. During the development of the teaching module in Austria, workshops with 97 teachers were conducted to identify educators' needs and offer an interdisciplinary usable teaching kit. The study showed that teachers greatly appreciated the hands-on workshops and implemented the module in their curriculum. For the student study, 416 students from Vienna, Austria, (209 students) and the Greater Boston area in the U.S. (207 students) were taught the same module by the same instructor. Student performance and learning impact were assessed using pre and post questionnaires. For the Austrian students, an additional long-term post questionnaire was completed six months after the intervention. Students' short-term performances increased significantly immediately after the module. This paper describes the outreach project and our teaching module, and proposes the development of curriculum extensions and teacher professional development for implementing interdisciplinary science concepts.
Students&apos; Understanding of Sustainability and Climate Change across Linked Service-Learning Courses
Author: Coleman, Kimberly
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Climate,Service Learning,College Instruction,Higher Education,Undergraduate Students,College Faculty,Sustainability,Qualitative Research

College and university faculty are increasingly being called upon to teach about sustainability. Many of these faculty members are incorporating content related to climate change because climate change is arguably the biggest threat to global sustainability. However, the concept of sustainability is complex, interdisciplinary, and potentially difficult to teach. Further, students may feel paralyzed in the face of climate change. Thus, delivering a course that effectively covers the concept of sustainability while also empowering students to take action against climate change is difficult. The goal of this article is to describe a joint effort between four college courses in different disciplines that used service-learning projects focused on climate change as a tool to teach sustainability concepts. Although the four courses were rooted in different disciplines, they intentionally shared common components and assignments, including community service projects, shared readings and reflections, and a symposium that brought all students together. Eighty preproject and 77 postproject reflections were qualitatively analyzed for themes related to learning outcomes. The results demonstrate that students in these classes gained a more sophisticated understanding of climate change and how it affects their respective disciplines, as well as a newfound sense of personal responsibility and agency for addressing climate change. Service-learning is an increasingly popular pedagogy on college campuses. This article highlights how the pedagogy can be used as a tool for integrating climate change into courses from multiple disciplines to teach about sustainability and empower students.
Integrated Interdisciplinary Science of the Critical Zone as a Foundational Curriculum for Addressing Issues of Environmental Sustainability
Author: White, Timothy
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Sustainability,Environmental Influences,Environmental Education,Earth Science,Undergraduate Students,Undergraduate Study,Water,Soil Science

Earth's critical zone (CZ) is the uppermost layer of Earth's continents, which supports ecosystems and humans alike. CZ science aims to understand how interactions among rock, soil, water, air, and terrestrial organisms influence Earth as a habitable system. Thus, CZ science provides the framework for a holistic-systems approach to teaching Earth surface and environmental science, especially related to environmental sustainability. Here, we describe efforts by an interdisciplinary team to create a full-semester, university curriculum that introduces upper-division students to CZ science. Course topics include a background in CZ science, key concepts and methods of CZ science, and units on land-atmosphere interactions, water budgets, landscape evolution, and biogeochemistry. The course culminates with a unit on human interactions within the CZ. Through interactive activities that use data sets from U.S. CZ observatories, the course emphasizes how a CZ framework is appropriate for teaching concepts across scientific disciplines, concepts of environmental sustainability, and the usefulness of CZ science for considering humanity's grand challenges. Materials can be integrated into existing courses or used as an independent course to maximize instructor flexibility; all materials were piloted in eight separate courses across a range of university settings. Although preassessments and postassessments of geoscience literacy did not show much change, students overwhelmingly agreed that they could use what they learned to help society overcome grand challenges. Thus, the holistic-systems approach advocated by CZ science and explored throughout this curriculum provides a unique opportunity to engage students in thinking about complex issues related to environmental sustainability.
Teaching Sustainability through System Dynamics: Exploring Stocks and Flows Embedded in Dynamic Computer Models of an Agricultural Land Management System
Author: Pallant, Amy
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Sustainability,Agriculture,Science Education,Science Curriculum,Soil Science,Land Use,Models,Curriculum Design

During the past several decades, there has been a growing awareness of the ways humans affect Earth systems. As global problems emerge, educating the next generation of citizens to be able to make informed choices related to future outcomes is increasingly important. The challenge for educators is figuring out how to prepare students to think about complex systems and sustainability. This article describes a set of design principles used to create online curriculum modules related to Earth's systems and sustainability. The modules include interactive, computer-based, dynamic Earth systems models that enable students to track changes that occur over time. Embedded prompts help students focus on stocks and flows within the system. This approach helps students to identify important resources in the models (stock prompt), to explain the processes that are changing the availability of the stock (process prompt), and to explore real-world examples (application prompts). We report how students learn about the sustainability of soil, a critical resource for growing food, in the module called &quot;Can we feed the growing population?&quot; We give an example of a model-based task, which shows how students identify stocks and flows associated with the model and how they consider human actions in the system. We discuss educational and research implications of using stocks and flows as a framework to structure students' exploration of dynamic models of Earth systems in teaching sustainability.
Sustainability in the University Student&apos;s Mind: Are University Endorsements, Financial Support, and Programs Making a Difference?
Author: Perrault, Evan K.
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: College Students,Financial Support,Student Surveys,Definitions,Student Attitudes,Sustainability,Knowledge Level,Sustainable Development

Despite the increasing awareness that sustainability is an issue needing ongoing attention, and despite millions of dollars spent yearly at universities to promote sustainable behaviors, previous research has found college students have primarily a unidimensional understanding of what sustainability encompasses. The current research sought to understand the depth of students' sustainability knowledge at one of the nation's &quot;greenest&quot; campuses and what implications this finding may have on future educational efforts. A representative sample of 779 students at a public liberal arts university were asked to define the term &quot;sustainability&quot; via an open-ended survey question. The survey also assessed students' knowledge of a dedicated on-campus sustainability office and preferred information sources and message channels. Definitions encompassing maintaining the status quo were the most prevalent, followed by definitions stating that sustainability had an environmental component. The least mentioned concepts were those encompassing the social or economic factors of sustainability--despite these factors being often-cited key components of sustainability. About one-third did not know their university had a Student Office of Sustainability. In addition, about 81% did not know that student fees had been supporting that office's $200,000 annual budget since its inception in 2011. Students' preferred source and message channels for receiving sustainability information (i.e., a mix of interpersonal sources and mass media channels) highlight the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and a multidimensional approach in sustainability education. Improvements in message branding and an increase in learning opportunities both inside and outside the classroom are recommended for advancing sustainability education on college campuses.
Sustainability: Why the Language and Ethics of Sustainability Matter in the Geoscience Classroom
Author: Metzger, Ellen P.
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Sustainability,Ethics,Science Instruction,Geology,Language Usage,Conservation (Environment),Teaching Methods,Instructional Materials,Scientific Concepts,Scientific Principles

Because challenges to sustainability arise at the intersection of human and biophysical systems they are inescapably embedded in social contexts and involve multiple stakeholders with diverse and often conflicting needs and value systems. Addressing complex and solution-resistant problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation thus demands not only a scientific understanding of Earth systems, but consideration of the underlying human values, institutions, and norms that drive unsustainable ways of living. The search for solutions amidst a multiplicity of players and an array of potential outcomes inevitably leads to ethical quandaries. The purpose of this commentary is to synthesize perspectives from the geosciences and philosophy to provide a rationale for including the ethical dimensions of sustainability in geoscience education and to clarify the nature and ethics of sustainability. Drawing on an approach developed in the book &quot;Living Well Now and in the Future: Why Sustainability Matters&quot; (Curren and Metzger, 2017), we outline a way to conceptualize sustainability that bridges scientific and ethical perspectives and present four fundamental principles of sustainability ethics derived from our analysis and from core commitments of common morality. We supply a compilation of relevant teaching approaches and materials to help geoscience educators connect the enumerated concepts and principles to classroom practice and we conclude with a call for further cross-disciplinary conversations among geoscientists, philosophers, and social scientists who share a commitment to including sustainability concepts and ethics in their teaching.
Measuring Success One (Sight) Syllable at a Time
Author: Hayes, Christopher
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Deafness,Hearing Impairments,Reading Programs,Reading Difficulties,Sight Method,Reading Instruction,Teaching Methods,Word Recognition,Disadvantaged Youth

Students with disabilities, like their economically disadvantaged counterparts, experience lower expectations and less demand for academic success from teachers. Students who experience both disabilities and social and economic disabilities may experience even less rigorous expectations from their teachers who experience only one condition or the other. Determined that this would not happen in his classroom, the author describes his experiences using the Edmark Reading Program (ERP), a program that develops sight reading skills for struggling readers. The author found this program particularly effective with children experiencing hearing loss. The visual supports that are available with the program help alleviate the challenges that children with hearing loss experience when learning to make sense of text. Instead of emphasizing phonics, the program focuses on recognizing words by sight.
The Geology and Sociology of Consumption: Team-Teaching Sustainability in an Interdisciplinary First-Year Seminar
Author: Walsh, Emily O.
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Team Teaching,Geology,Sociology,Interdisciplinary Approach,Sustainability,Reflection,Electronic Publishing,Web Sites,Climate,First Year Seminars,College Freshmen,Course Evaluation,Qualitative Research

The complex consequences of current consumption practices, such as climate change and ecosystem degradation, necessitate increased interdisciplinary exploration. In order to raise student awareness of these consumption-related issues, we designed a first-year team-taught seminar on sustainability. This innovative interdisciplinary course links geology and sociology in examining real-world problems through a variety of reflective, experiential, and collaborative activities. Our assessment of this course was based on a qualitative review of 18 students' reflective blog posts as a direct measure of student learning. While we continue to work on deepening the interconnections between geology and sociology and promoting student agency, students were successful in understanding the multifaceted complex nature of sustainability and recognizing the personal and social implications of consumption. Given these positive outcomes, we encourage the development of similar interdisciplinary collaborations.
Sustainable Energy for University Science Majors: Developing Guidelines for Educators
Author: Langbeheim, Elon
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Undergraduate Students,Undergraduate Study,College Science,Guidelines,Energy,Science Instruction,Majors (Students),Sustainable Development,Place Based Education,College Faculty

This paper describes the basic tenets of a sustainable energy course for university science majors. First, it outlines the three core components of the course: (1) The scientific evidence for the connection between climate change and energy usage; (2) An analysis of the capacity and environmental impact of various renewable and traditional energy resources; and (3) An overview of alternative pathways for the main energy usage in society--heating/cooling, transportation, and manufacturing. The course aims not only to present factual knowledge, but also to develop a critical approach for weighing between alternative energy solutions based on quantitative analyses. To meet these objectives, we suggest pedagogical considerations for organizing the content of the course, supporting student learning and raising student interest. For example, quantitative problems that can be investigated in the course are discussed as well as place-based examples of energy production from the local environment that can increase motivation for learning. Lastly, we suggest an agenda for research that examines the outcomes of sustainable energy courses that utilize place-based pedagogy.
Sustainability, the Next Generation Science Standards, and the Education of Future Teachers
Author: Egger, Anne E.
Date: 2017-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Education,Earth Science,Teacher Education Programs,Introductory Courses,Curriculum Development,Science Teachers,Science Instruction,Student Surveys,Undergraduate Students,Undergraduate Study,Sustainability,National Standards,Pretests Posttests,Elementary Secondary Education,Responses,Gender Differences,Student Attitudes,National Surveys,Preservice Teachers

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) emphasize how human activities affect the Earth and how Earth processes impact humans, placing the concept of sustainability within the Earth and Space Sciences. We ask: how prepared are future teachers to address sustainability and systems thinking as encoded in the NGSS? And how can geoscientists support them? Most future teachers receive their Earth Science preparation in a single introductory geoscience course, but the content and delivery methods of these courses are not well matched to the NGSS knowledge and skills they will teach. We implemented a nationwide survey in undergraduate courses that addressed sustainability to some extent in order to assess career interests, behaviors, and motivations. Matched pre- and postdata (n = 1,125) respondents were divided into three groups: those very likely (22%), those somewhat likely (22%), and those not likely (56%) to become teachers. The very likely group resembles the current STEM teacher workforce in gender but is more diverse than the current workforce and the population currently enrolled in teacher preparation programs. The very likely group has higher rates of sustainable behaviors, is motivated by family and friends more than other groups, and is more likely to envision using their knowledge about sustainability in their careers. However, their understanding of key concepts, such as systems thinking, is limited. We suggest that curricular materials that address sustainability through concepts in introductory geoscience courses, such as those presented here, provide a means of reaching this group and better preparing future teachers to teach the NGSS.
Supporting Deaf and Hard of Hearing Preschool Students' Emerging ASL Skills: A Bilingual Approach
Author: Mitchiner, Julie
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Deafness,Hearing Impairments,Preschool Children,American Sign Language,Teaching Methods,English,Bilingual Education,Language Skills,Interpersonal Communication,Preschool Education

Helping young deaf and hard of hearing children explore ASL and English is one of the important jobs with which the preschool teachers who work with those children are tasked. Learning ASL and English, the children will become bilingual, fluent in the two languages they will use throughout their lives. Working with two languages requires planning. Teachers need to work together to decide when and how to use each language. This enables teachers to avoid the use of simultaneous communication (i.e., signing and talking at the same time). Instead, teachers incorporate what is called &quot;concurrent use of ASL and English,&quot; which means using specific strategies to incorporate both ASL and English into teaching (Baker, 2006; Gárate, 2012). There are two broad categories of ASL and English bilingual methodology: (1) concurrent use of both ASL and English, and (2) language separation (Gárate, 2011; 2012). Both categories are equally valuable. Therefore, teachers schedule times when they will use ASL only, times when they will use English only, and times when they will alternate between both languages. This article discusses how separating the use of ASL and English allows young learners to study the functions and purposes of each language and to strengthen their receptive and expressive skills.
Camp Invention ASL: Inclusive, Relevant, Family-Focused Science
Author: Santini, Joseph
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Deafness,Hearing Impairments,STEM Education,American Sign Language,Disproportionate Representation,Summer Programs,Elementary School Students,Science Activities,Language Usage,Family Programs,Teaching Methods

Among the fields that particularly lack images of diverse participants are those of science, technology, engineering, and math, fields captured under the acronym STEM. Often in STEM fields, images and experiences of deaf and hard of hearing children, children of color, and young women are rare or absent altogether, with the result that these children do not visualize themselves as becoming scientists. The lack of representation in these materials creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads students to ongoing struggles with STEM curriculum and a lack of confidence, a process that has been explored by the National Research Council (2011). Research has shown that students benefit from seeing positive images of people like themselves doing science. Therefore, in the summer of 2013, when Jill Bradbury approached the author about the possibility of establishing a summer program in STEM and American Sign Language (ASL), the author was excited. The program would be a section of Camp Invention, a national organization that partners with over 1,000 schools throughout the United States to provide summer experiences in STEM fields for children entering grades one through six. Bradbury, a professor of English at Gallaudet University and a mother of two young hearing children, wanted to establish the first Camp Invention in ASL. In this camp, deaf and hard of hearing children, their hearing siblings, and hearing children of deaf parents could engage in the fun of learning science together. The camp would be called &quot;Camp Invention ASL.&quot; In 2016 the camp was established and is presented in this article.
High School Students with Cochlear Implants: Coming Together for Success
Author: Nussbaum, Debra
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Assistive Technology,Surgery,Deafness,Hearing Impairments,Residential Schools,Student Diversity,Secondary School Students,Interdisciplinary Approach,Meetings,Access to Information,Networks

While many people assume that students with cochlear implants have placements in mainstream schools, almost 25 percent of the approximately 175 students at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD), the residential high school on the campus of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., have an implanted listening device. Working with these students, professionals encounter a group that is ethnically, culturally, and educationally diverse. The professionals at MSSD have discovered that providing opportunities for these students to come together and interact can be an important part of their personal and social success. A multidisciplinary group of professionals--including speech-language pathologists, audiologists, school counselors, school psychologists, teachers, and graduate interns--collaborates to plan three to four gatherings a year to give students the chance to talk about their experiences and challenges. These events provide an opportunity to explore helpful listening accessories and discuss effective language and communication strategies, especially those that include social media. They address identity issues and connect with deaf adults, who may or may not use cochlear implants, within the community. These events are presented in this article.