Development of an innovative method for analyzing the presence of environmental sustainability themes and an ecological paradigm in science content standards
Section snippets
Content selection
One of the most pressing issues for current and future generations is clearly environmental sustainability (ES). In 1972, the first international community met to discuss sustainability as a matter of importance (Fabricatore & López, 2012), but it has taken until recent years for the pertinence and urgency of this matter to be seriously addressed by society in general and the educational establishment in particular (Tilbury & Wortman, 2004). In the past two decades, undergraduate programs have
Purpose of the current study
The purpose of the current research is to report on the development of a methodological approach to analyzing the ES themes and ecological framework present in Florida's K-12 NGSSS for science. The project involved an iterative approach for the development of a method that began with using key terms to identify the presence of ES themes and an ecological paradigm. The first step in this iterative approach was the identification of key terms that facilitate the development of ES themes. Key
Theoretical framework
The theoretical framework used by the present researchers in their analysis of Florida's NGSSS for science derives from Sterling's (2001) ecological paradigm. The ecological paradigm recognizes humans as one aspect of a multifaceted, dynamic, and intensely interconnected world. Sterling (2001) describes three dimensions in the paradigm: perceptual, conceptual and practice. Sterling's (2001) framework encourages a relational view of the world focusing on people's ability to recognize patterns of
Research question
The current study focused on the development of a method for examining the discourse of Florida's K-12 NGSSS for science. The following question guided the emerging research process: How and to what extent does the coding method assist with identifying the following themes of ES and an ecological paradigm in the discourse of the Florida's K-12 NGSSS for science: (a) environmental impacts (EI), (b) biodiversity (BD), (c) population dynamics (PD), (d) energy transformation (ET) and other (a key
Quantitative analysis
We examined the degree to which content experts agreed with respect to how they rated each keyword in terms of the following: as being or not being an exemplar of an Eco-Knowledge Term, each of the four environmental sustainability themes, and finally, each of the four ecological paradigm criteria. We computed the percent of agreement of ratings, defined as the percentage of key terms that raters coded in the same way. This percent agreement measure does not account for chance agreement or
Limitations
Regarding future research, several potential limitations of this work could be addressed with further study. While for most criteria the percentage of agreement between coders met or exceeded 80%, there were several limitations revealed during the analysis of the data. First, the data source was not the complete body of K-12 NGSSS standards. Further work could be done to examine the quality of the standards in a more comprehensive manner by analyzing the entire body of K-12 science content
Significance
There is a dearth of research that systematically analyzes the extent to which science content standards include ES themes and ecological paradigm. In this study, we focused on how well EE experts consistently identified the ES themes and ecological thinking (as defined by Sterling, 2001) found in science standards. The findings suggest that at times, the standards are written in such a way that it is not always clear whether the standards represent an ecological paradigm. If experts struggle
Conclusion
The novelty of using content analysis to inform stakeholders’ understanding of science content standards in relation to ES themes and an ecological paradigm is an insightful and engaging approach for learning how EE experts can understand and interpret the discourse of standards documents. The use of keywords to prompt the experts to identify the exemplars of the ecological paradigm extant in the standards allowed the researchers to discover that the standards documents are not explicit, clear
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Dr. Barry Barker whose input in this project was invaluable. We would also like to thank Dr. Ron Chenail for his steadfast contribution to the ideas and design of this study. Finally, this research project was supported by the President's Faculty Research and Development Grant at the Abraham S. Fischler School of Education at Nova Southeastern University.
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