Interdependency, Advocacy, and Consequential Learning Outcomes Across a Collaborative Elementary-Grades Wetland Action Unit (Poster 24)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Friday 8:00 a.m.
  In Poster Session: Science Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Two elementary class communities engaged in an ecology unit focused on advocating for local wetlands. We explored:
1. In what ways did two elementary class communities collectively communicate their care and advocate their community wetlands?
2. What were the classroom communities’ consequential learning outcomes as they worked together to support their community wetlands?
Guided by a social design-based experiment approach and a consequential learning framework, our findings are a. Students’ advocacy emphasized the interdependency of the abiotic and biotic members, including humans, and how all thriving depended on each other, b. Students leveraged and developed multiple forms of expertise as they advocated for the wetlands, and c. The students communicated their messages of wetland advocacy to multiple stakeholders.

Authors

• Kathleen Schenkel, San Diego State University

• Maraliz Fischler-Barraza, San Diego State University

• Christina Benson, San Diego State University

• Janet Ramsay, San Diego State University

• Madison Swayne, San Diego State University

• Jessica Barlow, San Diego State University