Plenary Sessions
Tuesday
Engaging Students in Climate Change
Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University
Tuesday, July 13 | 12:00-1:00pm PT / 1:00-2:00pm MT / 2:00-3:00pm CT / 3:00-4:00pm ET | Online
The challenge posed by human-induced climate change to society and the natural environment has been carefully and methodically summarized by thousands of peer-reviewed studies and decades' worth of exhaustive reports by Royal Societies, National Academies, federal agencies, and the IPCC. As Earth Science educators, our instinct may be to focus on scientific data: and there's no shortage of that, from the melting ice sheets of Greenland to the super-charged hurricanes of the Caribbean. However, public and political opinion remains sharply divided along ideological, socio-economic, and religious lines. When we take a data-focused approach, we may unknowingly reinforce a stalemate; so how do we break this vicious cycle? By sharing the right kind of data: data that connects directly with the values students have, and data that promotes a positive message with tangible, practical solutions our students can employ. Join Katharine Hayhoe as she untangles the science behind how beliefs shape our identity and highlights the key role our students can play in shaping conversations and inspiring change among their peers, families and communities in addressing solutions to climate change.
Thursday
Integrated STEM: Focusing on culturally-relevant Earth System Science
Gillian Roehrig, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Thursday, July 15 | 12:00-1:00pm PT / 1:00-2:00pm MT / 2:00-3:00pm CT / 3:00-4:00pm ET | Online
Central to integrated STEM is the use of real world problems as a context for learning to provide motivation and purpose for student learning.While research shows that engaging students in learning through authentic engineering design problems improves student interest in STEM, care needs to be taken that these real world problems generate interest and motivation for all students. Given the lack of diversity within many of the STEM fields, it is important that these real world problems that are personally motivating and connect STEM to students' lived experiences to increase STEM interest for students traditionally under-represented in STEM. Unfortunately, STEM activities tend to focus on the male-oriented, technical aspects of engineering, reinforcing STEM as a white male domain. Research shows that under-represented students are more motivated by projects with a communal goal orientation, focused on societal issues such as health, the environment, and social justice as opposed to more traditional projects such as designing cars and rockets. As such, earth science provides an important context for real world problems that allow integrated STEM to promote more diverse interest in STEM.