Ocean acidification and changing science standards: a prime opportunity to promote large scale behavioral change.
If we accept the premise that certain human behaviors are contributing to a decrease in ecosystem functions that are essential to ourselves and other species, then changing those behaviors is essential to our future. What better time and place to do that than in school? It’s much easier to make beha...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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Western CEDAR
2014
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| Online Access: | https://cedar.wwu.edu/ssec/2014ssec/Day2/175 https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1301&context=ssec |
| Summary: | If we accept the premise that certain human behaviors are contributing to a decrease in ecosystem functions that are essential to ourselves and other species, then changing those behaviors is essential to our future. What better time and place to do that than in school? It’s much easier to make behaviors than to change them. For over a dozen years, students from all political and cultural backgrounds are a captive audience in classrooms taking in lessons from their teachers. Three factors make this a prime moment to instill or enhance an emphasis on environmental stewardship of the oceans in schools: 1) the threat of ocean acidification has increased interest in ocean science; 2) growing interest among youth in the environment; and 3) the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) by the State of Washington. We will briefly describe the NGSS, and how ocean acidification is good fit for illustrating several of the core disciplinary ideas and crosscutting concepts emphasized in the NGSS. We will also describe some of the challenges and concerns teachers have in adopting new curricula. We will then highlight actions individuals and organizations are taking to bring ocean science into the classroom. These will range from a project to provide bus tickets to the beach, to an online collection of ocean acidification curriculum materials. And finally, we will suggest several actions leaders, scientists, and citizens can take to seize this opportunity to prepare our greatest resource - the next generations - to address the changing oceanic and climatic conditions they will inherit. |
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