College of Education
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item SUPPORTING EQUITABLE CLIMATE CHANGE DECISIONS IN A RURAL COMMUNITY THROUGH EXPANDED NOTIONS OF CLIMATE DATA: USING CRITICAL DATA PERSPECTIVES AND PRACTICES TO SUPPORT CLIMATE LEARNING WHILE CO-DESIGNING AN ONLINE, MAP-BASED, EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE(2024) Killen, Heather Ann; Clegg, Tamara; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Climate change threats are ever increasing, forcing communities to ask: what do they value and how are they going to protect it? Community-based climate education should play a central role in supporting equitable local decisions regarding local responses to climate challenges. However, there is little research about how to best support communities, especially rural communities that may be skeptical of climate change, to see how climate change is affecting their landscapes. In my dissertation I explore a community-based effort to build a map representing a valued local landscape feature and how this effort can act to convene knowledge about local landscape and climate, ratify that knowledge through inclusion onto a map, and ultimately inform community decision making. Guided by the perspectives and practices of critical data science and storylistening I frame my research around data and story. Prior work has considered the role of climate data within environmental education and story within community scholarship, but there is still a need to explore expanded notions of data within community learning and the role of community-held stories in local decision making. My dissertation focuses on how local, personally held landscape and climate data might complement and extend local, institutionally held data and how map building might support data-rich storytelling and listening. Working within a conservative-leaning, rural community and using the ArcGIS StoryMap web application, I engaged six community members over six design sessions to collaboratively design an online, public map of a creek and associated nature trail at the center of their town. I find that participants engaged in six key map-building design processes as they interacted with their local landscape in new ways. I also find that participants used the knowledge they brought into the design space to collaboratively expand, challenge, and occasionally transform their shared understanding. Together these processes allowed local, often generationally held, climate and landscape knowledge to become community-held understanding that could be included as data within the map. Using this analysis, I present my Evidentiary Landscape Learning (ELL) framework, placing my insights into a community-based learning context. The ELL framework demonstrates a pathway for engaging community members to understand how local and beyond-local socio-cultural values and systems are physically embodied in their local landscapes.Item Investigation of Elementary Teacher Capacity to Implement Environmental Literacy Requirements(2017) Parker, Melanie Denise; McLaughlin, Margaret; Norris, John; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)To uphold Maryland’s environmental literacy high school graduation requirement and curricular standards, local school districts must develop programs that graduate environmentally literate students and provide effective teacher professional development. This study focused on assessing the confidence and ability of elementary teachers in a Maryland school district to implement these requirements. It also sought to determine if there is an association between teachers’ environmental training and their own confidence teaching environmental literacy. This study is a quantitative descriptive and exploratory study that utilized an online survey. Descriptive analysis and tests of significance were used to examine how teachers’ experience, training and environmental knowledge relate to their awareness of state and district policy and curriculum, teaching about the environment, teaching outdoors, and overall confidence in teaching environmental concepts. The study found that elementary teachers in this school district have high awareness and confidence regarding teaching in and about the environment. They are also highly knowledgeable about environmental topics. These teachers demonstrated that focused training and experience significantly impacts confidence in environmental and outdoor teaching. These findings provide compelling evidence of the need to incorporate direct experiences and practice when shaping environmental literacy teacher professional development. Despite the overall confidence in teaching in and about the environment, a little over half of the teachers reported that they took students outside for instruction. Challenges noted are similar to those reported in other studies and include safety, time, resources, appropriate spaces, permission, appropriateness, and student management. Overcoming these challenges does not lie solely with teachers and their confidence but also will require input and support from the administration, facilities, and curriculum developers. Focused professional development on the pedagogy and management strategies for instruction in the outdoors is needed for both teachers and administrators. The opportunity of utilizing school grounds as its own classroom needs to be pursued as a cultural and systemic shift in our understanding of the modern classroom. The integration of environmental topics and outdoor instruction into content areas beyond science will build both the understanding and capacity of teachers and benefit student engagement and environmental literacy.Item A Figured Worlds Perspective on Middle School Learners' Climate Literacy Development(2016) Hestness, Emily E.; McGinnis, J. Randy; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of the relationship between middle school science learners’ conditions and their developing understandings of climate change. I applied the anthropological theoretical perspective of figured worlds (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998) to examine learners’ views of themselves and their capacities to act in relation to climate change. My overarching research question was: How are middle school science learners’ figured worlds of climate change related to the conditions in which they are embedded? I used a descriptive single-case study design to examine the climate change ideas of eight purposefully selected 6th grade science learners. Data sources included: classroom observations, curriculum documents, interviews, focus groups, and written assessments and artifacts, including learners’ self- generated drawings. I identified six analytic lenses with which to explore the data. Insights from the application of these analytic lenses provided information about the elements of participants’ climate change stories, which I reported through the use of a storytelling heuristic. I then synthesized elements of participants’ collective climate change story, which provided an “entrance” (Kitchell, Hannan, & Kempton, 2000, p. 96) into their figured world of climate change. Aspects of learners’ conditions—such as their worlds of school, technology and media use, and family—appeared to shape their figured world of climate change. Within their figured world of climate change, learners saw themselves—individually and as members of groups—as inhabiting a variety of climate change identities, some of which were in conflict with each other. I posited that learners’ enactment of these identities – or the ways in which they expressed their climate change agency – had the potential to reshape or reinforce their conditions. Thus, learners’ figured worlds of climate change might be considered “spaces of authoring” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 45) with potential for inciting social and environmental change. The nature of such change would hinge on the extent to which these nascent climate change identities become salient for these early adolescent learners through their continued climate change learning experiences. Implications for policy, curriculum and instruction, and science education research related to climate change education are presented.Item A STUDY OF TAIWANESE CHILDREN'S CONCEPTIONS OF AND RELATION TO NATURE: CURRICULAR AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS(2011) Dai, Amy Hsin-I; McGinnis, James R; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study investigated children's conceptions of and relations to nature. Understanding the factors that influence them was the goal. The study used the Contextual Model of Learning as the theoretical framework to structure the research questions and data analysis to understand children's nature learning in the personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts that change over time. Twelve children aged 5 and 6 were prompted to draw a picture of themselves in nature. They were interviewed about the sources of those ideas and living experiences, and if they thought photographs of scenery were nature. These twelve children's parents also participated in a survey to study the family influence. I used interpretational analysis to seek for common patterns and themes. Scoring rubrics, coaxial comparison, constant comparison, and the theoretical framework were used to triangulate and investigate influential factors of children's ideas of nature. The study showed that children at this age already had developed a basic conception of what is nature, but also need to learn about the role of human beings in nature and the interrelations of nature in order to develop environmental education ideas. Most children also had a positive feeling toward nature. Children's definitions of nature were developed mainly from what parents and grandparents had told them and their firsthand exposure to nature. Only during the weekend did the children's families have time to visit nature. It was found that most parents in this study stated that they were inspired by nature and were very willing to take their children to nature settings. The most visited natural places that were reported visited were parks in the city and the mountains surrounding the city. However, very often parents missed teachable opportunities to make the experiences with nature meaningful to children. Implications of the study apply to curriculum designers, educators, urban planners, and parents. It is recommended that teachers and schools develop their school-based curriculum so that children may learn about nature from their surrounding environments. Urban designers should consider providing easier access to green space in the city. Finally, it is recommended that parents not miss the opportunity to make family visits to nature meaningful science education learning opportunities.