Cognitive Foundations of Environmental Science Education: Exploring Impacts of Human Exceptionalism on Marine Social-Ecological Systems Thinking

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

Investigators will explore how intuitive understandings about the natural world contribute to students’ thinking and learning about marine social-ecological systems. Students entering science classrooms are not blank slates. Rather, they bring intuitive frameworks that help them to understand, explain, and predict the world around them. These frameworks can be beneficial for navigating a complex world, but they can also create obstacles to learning or lead to misconceptions when they clash with formal science concepts. The interplay of intuitive conceptual frameworks and formal science learning has been investigated in physics, chemistry, and biology. This project will explore how intuitive thinking plays a role in shaping student understanding of human-nature relationships within environmental science education. Researchers will explore a specific intuitive conceptual framework – the belief that humans are separate from the natural world, called human exceptionalism, – and examine its impact upon the learning of formal environmental science, especially given that it clashes with the formal understanding that human social systems are part of natural ecosystems. The study will include lower, middle, and high school students as well as undergraduates. The project should further elaborate a theoretical framework on the cognitive underpinnings of science learning and teaching and inform the development of pedagogical best practices in the environmental sciences and related fields. Investigators will examine the impact of a powerful intuitive conceptual framework–human exceptionalism –on how students learn the formal environmental science conceptual framework of Social Ecological Systems. The research will address four specific aims. (1) Explore the relations between human exceptionalist thinking and how entering and graduating undergraduate environmental science majors and non-major mental reason about marine Social Ecological Systems, as assessed with survey-based measures. (2) Chart the trajectory of how Human Exceptionalism and Social Ecological Systems thinking changes over time through a pilot longitudinal study of a cohort of undergraduate students as they progress through a degree program in environmental science. (3) Design interventions to impact Human Exceptionalism and measure changes in Social Ecological Systems thinking about marine habitats and intervene on changes in Social Ecological Systems thinking and see how that affects Human Exceptionalism. And (4) investigate the developmental trajectory of the relationship between Human Exceptionalism and Social Ecological Systems studying lower school, middle school, and high school students in coastal and inland communities using a mix of survey instruments and concept mapping. This project is supported by the EDU Core Research (ECR) program. ECR supports fundamental research that generates foundational knowledge that advances the research literatures in STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.