IN-PERSON: Applying Education

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, the BioGraph project has engaged in systematic design and development studies investigating the following overarching research question, “How and in what ways can complex systems resources be integrated into the high school science curriculum?” In this presentation, I first detail our approach to student learning and teacher professional development, for example using agent-based modeling and building teacher’s social capital. I then describe the design of our curriculum and instruction framework that underpins both the student-facing and teacher PD activities, such as argumentation prompts for debating empirical evidence gathered from simulations. Next, I detail our current and future research efforts on encouraging optimal epistemic practices of modeling and working toward transfer of those practices to evaluating complex socioscientific issues in the present post-truth milieu. Finally, I discuss research findings, compiled from several empirical studies working with hundreds of high school students in approximately 30 classrooms, that support the design choices, modifications in the design, and lessons learned toward the goals of achieving high quality learning and instruction of complex systems resources.