Comments for the Symposium: Exploration and Critique of the NRC’s New Conceptual Framework for Science

Annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching

Charles W. Anderson, Michigan State University

April 2, 2011

Developing Science Standards in a Time of Climate Change

My Past Positions about Specific Content in Standards

• Advocate for depth over depth

• Advocate for scientific or developmentally fundamental knowledge and practice

• Avoid strong positions about what content is important

BUT

This. Time. Is. Different.

This content is way more important than the rest of the framework

Human activities are constrained by and, in turn, affect all other processes at Earth’s surface. (Human Interactions with Earth)

How do humans affect the Earth, and how do Earth’s changes affect humans?

How do natural hazards affect humans? (Natural Hazards)

How do humans depend upon Earth’s materials? (Natural Resources)

How do humans change the Earth? (Human Impacts on the Earth)

How will global climate change affect humans? (Global Climate Change)

The Choices We Face with Respect to Climate Change

We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We’re already doing some of each and will do more of all three. The question is what the mix will be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required, and the less suffering there will be.John Holdren, science advisor to Barack Obama

Our Current Choices

• We are now choosing suffering, but not our own suffering:–Our children’s suffering–Suffering of people with fewer

resources for adaptation

Forms that Suffering Takes

• Genocide (Rwanda, Darfur)

• Natural disasters (European heat wave, Russian heat wave, Australian drought and floods, Pakistan floods)

• The headlines may not say “climate change”

• Suffering starts with most vulnerable people, but they will find ways to export their suffering just as now export goods and services to support our lifestyles

Responding to Acute and Long-term Existential Threats

• In the past we have responded to immediate existential threats (e.g., Nazi Germany) by pulling together to defeat a common enemy

• We now face a slower but more severe existential threat– It takes decades to change our economy– It takes decades more for the climate

system to respond• A great challenge for education is figuring out

how to recognize the threat and “stay the course” on the time scales that will be needed.

Three Dimensions of Framework

• Cross-cutting concepts• Scientific and engineering practices• Core disciplinary ideas

• What should national standards look like if we focus on climate change?

The Keeling Curve as an Example

Core Disciplinary Ideas

• Understanding carbon cycling—the causes of the yearly cycle and long-term trends in the Keeling curve—requires people to trace matter and energy through Earth systems at multiple scales in space and time.

• Understanding the effects of changes in atmospheric composition on climate, hydrology, and living systems requires study of core concepts in life, Earth, and physical sciences

• Understanding the costs and benefits of current technologies, as well as the costs and benefits of strategies for mitigation and adaptation, requires careful analysis of technological systems

These Ideas Are:

• More important than Newton’s laws

• More important than astronomy

• More important than our evolutionary past

Three Dimensions of Framework

• Cross-cutting concepts• Scientific and engineering practices• Core disciplinary ideas

• What should national standards look like if we focus on climate change?

Can we TRUST what scientists say about the Keeling Curve and its

implications?

Scientific Inquiry and Argument

• Uncertainty as a core issue for scientific inquiry (Metz, 2004)

• Scientific position: – Our knowledge of past, present, and future is

inevitably uncertain– BUT we can reduce uncertainty, by:

• Giving authority to arguments from evidence rather than individual people

• Commitment to rigor in research methods• Collective validation through consensus of

scientific communities (peer review)• Identifying sources for knowledge claims

Values Underlying Scientific Inquiry

• These are the core values of scientific communities:

• Giving authority to arguments from evidence rather than individual people

• Commitment to rigor in research methods• Collective validation through consensus of

scientific communities• Identifying sources for knowledge claims

• Reasons scientists adhere to these values• Scientific training• Cheating will almost certainly be caught

Scientific Values and Political Discourse

• With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate — including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning — accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming. (NY Times, 10/17/10)

• "Michael Steel, a spokesman for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, who will become speaker in January, said, “The Select Committee on Global Warming was created by Democrats simply to provide political cover to pass their job-killing national energy tax.” (NY Times, 12/2/10)

A Message from Burt S.

Dr. Anderson, While increasing understanding of the nature of conservation of matter is not a bad thing, linking it to "climate change" is suspect. There has been no global warming since 1998 from what I'm reading. Of course the climate is changing. It always has. Observable climate change is scientific. To state that humans are responsible for most of it is speculation and outside the realm of observable science.  The component of carbon dioxide emitted into the air by human activity is very small (3%?) with water in the air accounting for 90% of the greenhouse effect. Half the carbon dioxide injected into the air by human activity is immediately absorbed by nature. After the math is done, the human component of the increase in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year is on the order of .015%.  The global warming issue (renamed climate change since the globe has temporarily quit warming) is more likely kept alive by the $4 billion in tax dollars spent this year on global warming research.  In my humble opinion......... Sincerely, Burt S----, BS/MA

What’s at Stake? Changes in Public Opinion

Human Activity Natural Geological

Causes

April, 2008 47% 34%

January, 2010 34% 47%

What causes climate change?

• Note the volatility of public opinion: Opinions about the Earth’s climate change as fast as opinions about the next election • Many people decide who to trust without being able to judge scientific quality of arguments from evidenceSource: Newsweek, March 1, 2010

Possible Consequences

• Political discourse and personal decisions can become dominated by different subcultures each constructing their own “reality”—Prius drivers, SUV drivers, etc.

• BUT we all live together on the same Earth• In 50 years we will know for sure who is right

and who is wrong• Our children will live with the consequences

What’s at Stake?

• As educators, we can give people the ability to choose among mitigation, adaptation, and suffering

• We owe it to our children to give them access to the knowledge and values needed for informed choices about climate change:– Help students understand the consequences of

our policies and actions– Help students understand the purposes and

values of scientific inquiry• This is our most important obligation as we

develop new national standards