Does 4 dimensional teaching engage high school students and help them learn science? Can teachers find synergies while integrating practices, concepts and cross-cutting themes, so that 4D teaching is a win-win proposition? A team of science and computation educators and ecologists has been wrestling with these questions with a diversity of students and teachers in the Comp Hydro project. The project team has developed curricula for 2-3 weeks of instruction in Earth, environmental, life and computer science or engineering classes through 2 R&D cycles with pilot teachers in Baltimore, MD, Tucson, AZ and Missoula, MT. The modules are grounded in a thorny local problem: destructive urban flooding (MD) or groundwater contamination (AZ, MT). Students explore data and representations, work with physical models, computer and role-played simulation models and conduct hands-on investigations of key processes such as infiltration and runoff. 4DEE elements feature prominently in Comp Hydro: ecosystem and hydrology concepts, spatial/temporal and systems thinking, modeling and data sense making, and human influences and management. We are addressing our questions with data from: 1) student interviews and pre- and post-instruction assessments and 2) teacher focus groups, teaching logs and classroom observations.
Results/Conclusions
Most students found the local problem important, though a number rated the importance as low. Comments about flooding such as, “doesn’t really flood in my area” or “my house is on a hill” suggest that the scale of some students’ interest is more local than we had anticipated. Most students rated the importance of understanding how computer models can address real world problems as high, supporting the idea that integrating this practice into science teaching can be motivational. Students showed a range of sophistication in their science-based computational thinking, with only a few achieving the higher levels. Teachers’ motivations to integrate computational and scientific thinking included improvements in student engagement, depth of student learning and both real world and vocational (computational) applications. Engineering teachers appreciated the real world context of Comp Hydro, but were challenged by their lack of hydrology background. Implementation was limited by lack of experience with hydrology (for engineering teachers) or modeling (for science teachers). In Baltimore, integration of computational practices was further limited by lack of computers, prompting more reliance on role-playing “be the model” simulations but potentially limiting student outcomes nonetheless. Insights from Comp Hydro about the demands for effective 4DEE teaching will be discussed.