Students' Developing Understanding of Water in Environmental Systems

Covitt, Beth A.; Gunckel, Kristin L.; Anderson, Charles

doi:10.3200/joee.40.3.37-51

Cited by 95 publications

(103 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Students often have difficulty describing water and processes in hidden or invisible parts of the water cycle (Ben‐Zvi Assaraf & Orion, 2005a, 2005b, 2010; Covitt, Gunckel, & Anderson, 2009). For example, many children conceive of groundwater as located in underground sewers, lakes, streams, or layers (Ben‐Zvi Assaraf & Orion, 2005a, 2005b, 2010; Covitt, Gunckel et al, 2009; Dickerson, Callahan, Van Sickel, & Hay, 2005; Dickerson & Dawkins, 2004; Dickerson, Penick, Dawkins, & Van Sickel, 2007). They hold inaccurate conceptions of the size and scale of aquifers, and view groundwater as a dead‐end in the hydrologic cycle (Ben‐Zvi Assaraf & Orion, 2005a, 2005b; Dickerson et al, 2005; Dickerson & Dawkins, 2004).…”

Section: Literature Review Of Student Thinking About Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

A learning progression for water in socio‐ecological systems

et al. 2012

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Providing model‐based accounts (explanations and predictions) of water and substances in water moving through environmental systems is an important practice for environmental science literacy and necessary for citizens confronting global and local water quantity and quality issues. In this article we present a learning progression for water in environmental systems for students in elementary through high school grades. We investigated student accounts of water and substances in water moving through atmospheric, surface, and soil/groundwater systems, including human‐engineered components of these systems. Using an iterative process of model design, assessment, and interpretation, we identified four levels of achievement in student reasoning. Levels 1 and 2 force‐dynamic accounts explain movement of water as interactions between natural tendencies of water and countervailing powers. Level 3 incomplete school science accounts put events in order and trace water and substance along multiple pathways that include hidden and invisible components. Only Level 4 qualitative model‐based accounts include driving forces and constraining factors to explain or predict where water and substances in water move in given situations. The majority of high school students on average provide accounts between levels 2 and 3. We discuss the significance of these results for citizen participation in addressing common water issues. We end with suggestions for how the water learning progression can be used to inform changes to curricula, assessment, and instruction to support students in achieving level 4 performance. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 843–868, 2012

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Section: Literature Review Of Student Thinking About Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

A learning progression for water in socio‐ecological systems

et al. 2012

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“…Difficulties included incorporating ground water (Dickerson and Dawkins, 2004;Dickerson et al, 2005;Shepardson et al, 2009), surface-ground water interactions (Siegel, 2008), perceptions of the hydrological system as static, i.e., not relating processes and drivers to flow of water (Ben-Zvi Assarf and Orion, 2005), and a non-systems approach, i.e., failure to articulate how the laws and processes related to each other (Kali et al, 2003). Students also frequently either neglected, or exaggerated biological and human interactions with hydrological systems (Dove et al, 1999;Shepardson et al 2009;Covitt et al, 2010). For example, on the pre-test students rarely mentioned evapotranspiration, in which vegetation plays a critical role, but cited "human processes -such as filtering, preparing water to be tap water, or industrial processes" as the most critical aspects of the hydrological cycle.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These have been concentrated primarily at the pre-college level (Dove et al, 1999, Shepardson et al, 2005, 2009Dickerson and Dawkins, 2004;Dickerson et al, 2005;Ben-Zvi Assarf and Orion, 2005;Covitt et al, 2010;Schwartz et al, 2011), with a smaller number looking at introductory college courses (Dickerson et al, 2005;Smith et al, 2006;Sibley et al, 2007;Rappaport, 2009;Fryar et al, 2010;Rathburn and Weinberg, 2011) and a very limited number at the upper division undergraduate/graduate level (Dickerson et al, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing student understanding of physical hydrology

Marshall

Castillo

Cardenas

2013

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Our objective is to devise a mechanism to characterize and assess upper division and graduate student thinking in hydrology. We accomplish this through development and testing of an assessment tool for a physical hydrology class. The instrument was piloted in two sections of a physical hydrology course. Students were asked to respond to two questions that probed understanding and one question that assessed their ability to apply their knowledge, both prior to and after the course. Student and expert responses to the questions were classified into broad categories to develop a rubric to score responses. Using the rubric, three researchers independently blind-coded the full set of pre-and post-artifacts, resulting in 89% inter-rater agreement on the pre-tests and 83% agreement on the post-tests. The majority of responses made by students at the beginning of the class were characterized as showing only recognition of hydrology concepts from a non-physical perspective; post surveys indicated that the majority had moved to a basic understanding of physical processes, with some students achieving expert understanding. Our study has limitations, including the small number of participants who were all from one institution and the fact that the rubric was still under development. Nevertheless, the high inter-rater agreement from a group of experts indicates that the process we undertook is potentially useful for assessment of learning and understanding physical hydrology.

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“…Frameworks for water‐related environmental science include both natural and human‐engineered systems (Covitt et al ; Gunckel et al ), such as systems for cleaning and distributing water. Researchers have investigated students’ preconceptions of access to safe drinking water.…”

Section: Misconceptions Alternative Conceptions Preconceptions?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Student Conceptions of Arid, Urban Watershed Management

Thomas¹,

Svihla

2017

Contemporary Water Research

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Despite the central importance of water, few students have the opportunity to study water resources management in secondary education. Even in tertiary education—unless they major in water resources or a closely related field—they are likely to receive only a week or two of instruction about water resources in introductory science courses. Typical instruction in such courses is textbook‐based, with the course instructor lecturing on a broad range of topics. Complicating this, little is known about student preconceptions, which may interfere with—or be used to support—learning. We sought to identify preconceptions in an introductory environmental science course at an urban, research (R1) university in the arid Southwest of the United States. We used a pre/post design to assess student preconceptions about their urban campus watershed and designed a brief, experiential learning exercise. While experiential learning is common in water resources management programs, it is less common in introductory courses. We developed a coding scheme to analyze the pre‐ and post‐test responses; results showed students held normative and non‐normative preconceptions. There was significant growth in students’ conceptual understanding between the pre‐test and post‐test, (t(33) = −2.25, p < .05), with a small to medium effect size, d = −0.393. This finding supports the use of experiential learning as a means to teach students about water resources, even in an introductory course. Understanding students’ preconceptions of arid, urban watersheds can assist in how to better design curriculum. Such improvements in curricular design can empower students to make better decisions about urban watersheds.

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Students' Developing Understanding of Water in Environmental Systems

Cited by 95 publications

References 19 publications

A learning progression for water in socio‐ecological systems

A learning progression for water in socio‐ecological systems

Assessing student understanding of physical hydrology

Changing Student Conceptions of Arid, Urban Watershed Management

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