Reading Nature as a Strategy to Increase Science Achievement and Ecological Content Knowledge in Middle School Students

Abstract

This paper reports on two methodologies for the teaching and learning of ecology in a rural North Georgia private school for 6th and 7th grade students. The purpose of this study was to test two different teaching methodologies to determine which teaching strategy was more effective in increasing standardized achievement and conceptual knowledge in students through the analysis of four content areas (autecology, taxonomy, synecology, and systemic view). It examines the idea of reading nature, a term that was coined by Swedish professor Ola Magntorn in 2007. Curriculum was designed to implement two different methodologies to help students read nature in a stream ecosystem. The four content areas being taught had either an outdoor-focused 'bottom up' approach or a classroom based ‘top down' approach. The experimental groups utilized the bottom-up approach, while the control groups utilized the top-down approach common to science education in American schools. Both teaching methodologies were measured using a standardized achievement pre- and post-test, as well as a written concept map pre- and post-test to understand how the students were making connections to the material they learned. Students were asked to identify and make as many connections as possible to 15 natural items on a tray. A large part of the instruction took place outdoors for the experimental group, whereas the control group's instruction took place in a normal classroom-lab setting. This study gives important insight into how bottom-up processing and direct experience with natural systems can increase standardized scores in science education just as well as traditional models used in many schools. In addition, bottom-up processing vastly improved middle school students ability to make conceptual connections to the natural world.