Data, Place, and Pedagogy: Engaging students with urban earth systems
Leader
Angela Hood, Cary Institute
The Critical Zone (CZ) — Earth's "living skin" — is the space where bedrock, soil, water, air, and life interact to shape Earth's surface and sustain life. These interactions are especially complex in urban and suburban environments, where most of the U.S. population lives. The Urban Critical Zone (UCZ) Project, part of the NSF-funded CZ Network, investigates how urban processes across major metropolitan corridors — spanning different climates, development densities, and ages — influence soil, streams, and ecosystems. Bringing CZ science into the classroom helps urban and suburban students connect Earth processes to their lived experiences while strengthening scientific literacy and practices. In this workshop, participants will don their "Student Hats" to engage in a UCZ Data Jam. They will analyze curated UCZ datasets to discover potential patterns and trends, interpret results by linking them to urban processes occurring within the research area, and construct evidence-based claims describing how those processes influence the CZ. Findings will be communicated in both scientific formats and creative representations. Throughout the workshop, participants experience pedagogy that is phenomenon-driven, place-based, and student-centered, while celebrating collaboration and student sense-making.
Participants will also explore ready-to-use UCZ resources, including Data Jam support materials and classroom-tested Data Lessons. Participants will have time to share classroom experiences, brainstorm adaptations for diverse teaching contexts, and begin an individual implementation plan tailored to their local environment.
Participants will leave this workshop with strategies, adaptable resources, and a vision for integrating authentic and creative data investigations in their practice to support their students' capacity to "think like scientists!"
Intended Audience
The primary audiences for this workshop are secondary Earth and environmental science teachers and the educators that work with them, particularly those working in NGSS or NGSS-aligned school districts. These educators will benefit from the opportunity to experience an Urban Critical Zone Data Jam (a student-centered project focused on analysis and interpretation of authentic datasets, formulating evidence-based claims based on their analyses, and presenting findings in both scientific formats and creative representations) from a student perspective. This workshop models research-based, phenomenon-driven pedagogy while building participants' own data literacy skills. Middle and high school teachers will leave the session with ready-to-use classroom strategies and resources, as well as firsthand practice in implementing them, increasing their confidence to adapt and apply the activities with their own students.
Goals
By the end of this workshop, participants will:
- Experience the student-facing process of a Data Jam: analyzing authentic datasets, identifying patterns and trends, and constructing and communicating evidence-based claims through both scientific and creative formats.
- Strengthen their own data literacy skills by working with real Urban Critical Zone datasets.
- Explore and adapt ready-to-use Urban Critical Zone teaching resources for their own teaching contexts.
- Develop an initial implementation plan for integrating authentic data investigations into their classrooms.