Climate change is a pressing societal challenge. It is also a pedagogical challenge and a worldwide phenomenon, whose local impacts vary across different locations. Climate change reflects global inequity; communities that contribute most to emissions have greater economic resources to shelter from its consequences, while the lowest emitters are most vulnerable. It is scientifically complex, and simultaneously evokes deep emotions. These overlapping issues call for new ways of science teaching that center personal, social, emotional, and historical dimensions of the crisis. In this article, we describe a middle school science curriculum approach that invites students to explore large-scale data sets and author their own data stories about climate change impacts and inequities by blending data and narrative texts. Students learn about climate change in ways that engage their personal and cultural connections to place; engage with complex causal relationships across multiple variables, time, and space; and voice their concerns and hopes for our climate futures. Connections to relevant science, data science, and literacy standards are outlined, along with relevant data sets and assessments.
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Make with Data: Challenging and contextualizing open-source data with personal and local knowledge
In this poster we describe Make with Data, a two-year project that invites teachers and students from public high schools to work with professional data scientists and open-source data to explore issues important to their local community. While the negotiation of the personal and the quantitative resulted in tensions, Make with Data students found their personal experiences a useful tool for adding context and complexity to the phenomena being studied.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1759224
- PAR ID:
- 10299038
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences—ICLS 2021
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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