Drawing knowledge from the experience: Students' understandings of ecosystems before and after a short field experience

Abstract

Human activities are increasingly and profoundly altering many of the processes and subsystems that make up the Earth System, upon which we depend for life. In order to enable citizens to make responsible environmental decisions, it is necessary to empower them with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand the connections between themselves and the ecological processes and systems with which they interact. A first step toward thinking globally about the Earth system is thinking locally about familiar ecosystems; students need opportunities to engage with ecosystems in ways that help them develop sophisticated understandings of ecosystems as complex systems of interacting abiotic and biotic components. The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to illuminate the phenomenon of students’ understandings of ecosystems and how those understandings changed after a short field study. Participants were 27 fifth-grade students from three schools visiting a local Ecological Research Station during a school field-trip. Data consisted of students’ drawings and written descriptions of ecosystems elicited through a drawing task implemented immediately before and after a field experience. Research has demonstrated that both long-term field experiences and learning units that provide students with explicit frameworks for how to think about ecosystems positively influence student knowledge about ecosystems (eg. Assaraf & Orion, 2010; Hmelo-Silver, Marathe, & Liu, 2007; Kenyan, Assaraf, & Goldman 2014). This study investigates the influence of a short-term (90-minute) out-of-classroom field experience that does not explicitly teach how to think about an ecosystem, but instead engages students in the scientific practices of gathering data and making data-based statements (observations/comparisons). Results of quantitative and qualitative analyses illustrate the ways students’ understandings of ecosystems changed. This study provides information about the type and duration of experiences that can cultivate students’ development of increasingly sophisticated understandings of ecosystems and thus lay the foundation for future learning.