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Designing the Curriculum
The learning activities were developed over a period of five-and-a-half years, enabling the design team to conduct three cycles of design, classroom testing, and re-design. The curriculum content and structure changed substantially over that time in response to observation of classrooms and feedback from teachers.
Stage 1: Identifying Content and Environmental Case Studies
In the first two years of the project, the developers weighed a wide variety of considerations to identify the environmental issues that would be the basis for the course. Each environmental issue had to:
- create a demand for students to master important learning objectives in environmental science. To guide this process, we used the NRC standards, AAAS benchmarks, and national geography standards, as well as state standards and the list of topics for the AP environmental science program of study.
- have broad enough implications to be interesting to urban, suburban, and rural students throughout the U.S.
- support the creation of case studies covering different regions of the U.S. that students could investigate using geospatial data.
Through this process, three environmental issues were identified: the conversion of land for human use, generation of electricity, and management of water resources. The issues all focus on increasing demand for limited resources as the result of a growing population in the U.S with a steadily increasing standard of living.
Stage 2: Curriculum Development
The environmental issues identified in stage 1 were used as the primary organizers of the curriculum. In each case, these issues pose decisions for contemporary society that have important environmental implications. In the curriculum design process, these issues were used to motivate learning objectives about basic Earth processes, environmental impacts of human activities, analysis of data, and environmental decision-making.
Once the case studies and content were identified, a collaborative team of educational researchers, scientists, teachers, and technologists started to align the cases and content with the Learning-for-Use model. The team identified learning objectives, researched the case studies, and assembled datasets for them. With all the pieces in place, the team began the process of developing and refining learning activities, software, and readings.
Stage 3: Pilot Testing
Teachers have been integrally involved in every aspect of the curriculum development and bring an informed, realistic classroom perspective to the design process. Practicing teachers have been members of the design team throughout the project. Activities have been piloted in their classrooms as part of the design process. In addition, the project's lead curriculum developers have all been experienced secondary science teachers.
Teachers and Designers Working Together:
Decision Making Framework
In the first iteration of CASES, the final project had a more open-ended design. In the first design, students were asked to select an option and justify it without any specific support for decision-making. Based on an analysis of student work and classroom observations, the CASES team recognized that students were not well enough prepared to weigh all the scientific information and the different perspectives of the multiple stakeholders in the way that they were being asked to do. The design team determined that students would benefit from an explicit structure for the decision making process. From decision-making research in the medical and environmental field, the CASES team developed a framework that helps students weigh the different stakeholders values and perspectives and scientific evidence when making a decision. Then they designed a sequence of activities to introduce the decision-making process and enable students to build their decision-making skills. This sequence is now integrated throughout Unit 1, 2, & 3.
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Field Testing
CASES was pilot- and field-tested by 27 teachers in 21 schools between 1999 and 2002. The national field test took place in the 2001-2002 school year in a mix of urban, rural, and suburban schools in Illinois, New York, Colorado, Wyoming, and California.
SRI International, conducted an evaluation of the field test that consisted of four elements: an assessment of student learning outcomes, an assessment of student attitudes, observations of teacher implementation, and a survey of teacher perceptions. The most notable results of these evaluations are that students demonstrated significant learning gains from pre-test to post-test (.69 standard deviations) and that teachers reported a high level of satisfaction with the curriculum. With respect to the learning gains, suburban and urban students demonstrated similar learning gains, and all sections of the curriculum that were evaluated showed consistent learning gains.
External Review Process
All teacher and student materials were reviewed for scientific accuracy and bias. Every chapter was reviewed by at least three external experts, who were scientists with Ph.D.s in a relevant content area or experts in the practices discussed the curriculum, such as engineers with specializations in power generation or dams. The materials were revised in response to the reviews and returned to the reviewers for a final review prior to publication.
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