ERIC Number: EJ1471704
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Jun
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1059-0145
EISSN: EISSN-1573-1839
Available Date: 2024-10-30
Leveraging Uncertainty as a Means of Facilitating Sensemaking within a Digital Wildfire Curriculum
Brandin Conrath1; Amy Voss Farris2; Scott McDonald2
Journal of Science Education and Technology, v34 n3 p550-564 2025
The changing landscape of geoscience learning has initiated growing interest in engaging science learners with climate data. One approach to teaching climate is the application of broadly accessible digital science curricula, which often include data tools such as visualizations, data representations, and simulations embedded within digital science curricula. We are specifically interested in how students and teachers grapple with scientific uncertainty in digital curricula. Our paper therefore examines how a 7th grade science class and their teacher leverage moments of uncertainty in their work within a digital geohazard curriculum to learn about wildfire risk and impact. We analyzed episodes of learners' interactions, and those included scientific uncertainty related to key ideas about wildfires. We also attend to how the teacher orchestrates across class members' ideas and the representations they were using. Our findings suggest that the digital curriculum elicited important sensemaking about wildfires and climate, including the interpretation of trends (Episode 1), working with simulations as a means of scientific investigation (Episode 2), and making meaning across disparate climate maps (Episode 3). Importantly, our analysis highlights the imperative work of the teacher in creating and leveraging productive sensemaking around the climate representations and simulations, yet outside of the predetermined curriculum. Our findings illustrate that maximizing students' learning about climate in digital science curricula demands attention beyond teachers' ad hoc adaptation, and rather, the intentional design of tools that support sensemaking about uncertainty as a dialogic process that is negotiated in response to students' ideas.
Descriptors: Earth Science, Wildlife, Science Education, Climate, Science Curriculum, Data Analysis, Visualization, Middle School Students, Grade 7, Secondary School Science, Risk, Natural Disasters, Maps, Simulation, Electronic Learning, Curriculum Design, Ambiguity (Context), Environmental Education
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Junior High Schools; Middle Schools; Secondary Education; Elementary Education; Grade 7
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1812362
Author Affiliations: 1Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA; 2Pennsylvania State University, College of Education, University Park, USA