STEAM and Environmental Education Case Study

06237.png

Exemplar Type: CASE STUDY
Title: STEAM and Environmental Education
Grades: 3-5, 6-8
Discipline: Interdisciplinary
Submitted By: Susan Santone


STEAM and Environmental Education Case Story

With each passing day, 21st century learning gets a little more obsolete. Don’t get left behind. Empower students and revolutionize learning with the hottest content around.

The 21st century is defined by unprecedented, inter-connected challenges: climate change, water scarcity, food deserts, economic inequality—and on. Left unsolved, these problems will plague students of the 22nd century, the descendants of today’s students. Equity is truly intergenerational.

The Next Generation Science Standards support “scientific and technological literacy for an educated society,” and recognize that “economic innovation depends on a broad foundation of math and science learning.” But behind this “looms the larger question of what it takes to thrive in today’s society. Citizens now face problems from pandemics to energy shortages whose solutions require all the... genius we can muster.”

Changing the story requires wise applications of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math). But tomorrow’s careers demand something more: economic literacy and a commitment to equity.


BENCHMARKS REPRESENTED IN THIS EXEMPLAR

Big Ideas

  • Creativity (the generation of new forms) is a key property of all living systems and contributes to nature’s ability to sustain life

  • Diversity makes complex life possible. It assures resilience in living systems

  • Everything must go somewhere because there is no such place as “away”. Matter and energy do not appear or disappear. They cannot be created or destroyed. In a healthy community, one species’ waste is another species’ food

  • All systems have limits. Healthy systems live within their limits. Tap the power of limits

  • There is an appropriate rate and scale for every living thing and they may not be the same in every circumstance

  • We are all in this together: We are interdependent on each other and on the natural systems

  • Nature sustains life by creating and nurturing communities

  • A small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything

  • A sustainable solution solves more than one problem at a time and minimizes the creation of new problems

  • Treating symptoms makes them worse over time, creates new problems and doesn’t address the fundamental problem. Create change at the source not the symptom

  • Every system is perfectly formed to get the results it gets

  • The significant problems we face can’t be solved with the same thinking we used to create them. Our prior experiences with the world create cognitive frameworks (also known as mental models/maps) that inform what we can perceive. They shape our behavior and our behavior causes results. If we want to produce different results, it all begins with a change in thinking

  • There is no beginning or end in a system. Intervene where there are favorable conditions, i.e., where and when possible

  • Fairness applies to all. To us, to them and to the “we” that binds us all together

  • Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

  • We all depend on and are responsible for “the commons”, i.e., what we share and hold in trust for future generations. Recognize and Protect the Commons

  • We must pay attention to the results of our thinking and behavior on the systems upon which we depend if we want to thrive over time. Read the Feedback

  • We are all responsible for the difference we make. Everything we do and everything we don’t do makes a difference

Higher Order Thinking Skills

  • Anticipatory: Futures Thinking

  • Emergent: Creative Thinking

  • Emergent: Design Thinking

  • Emergent: Ecologically Design

  • Complex: Critical Thinking

  • Mindful: Questioning

  • Mindful: Reflective Thinking

  • Mindful: Transference

  • Hands On Skills: Use and creation of appropriate technology to the place and culture in which you find yourself

  • Hands On Skills: Building, Making, Tinkering, Crafting

  • Hands On Skills: Computer Modeling

Applied Knowledge

  • Inventing The Future

  • Strong Sense of Place

  • The Many Ways of Knowing

  • Healthy Commons

  • System Dynamics and Change

  • Responsible Local and Global Citizenship

  • Multiple Perspectives

  • Sustainable Economics

Dispositions

  • Curious

  • Efficacious

  • Imaginative

  • Mindful

  • Open Minded

  • Persevering

  • Collaborative

  • Ethical

  • Place/Community Conscious

  • Respectful,

  • Responsible

  • Self Aware

Applications and Actions

  • Create Social Learning Communities

  • Engage in Dialogue

  • Engage in Role-Playing, Learning Journeys, Simulations & Games

  • Build from successes, Learn from mistakes, develop strategies to improve, and apply what is learned

  • Plan Scenarios

  • Teach and Learn

  • Accept responsibility for the consequences of design

  • Apply technology appropriately so that today’s solutions don’t become tomorrow’s problems

  • Contribute to the regenerative capacity of the systems upon which we depend

  • Count and value all the capital (natural, financial, human and social)

  • Design for multiple pathways, resilience and reinforcement

  • Design for whole systems integrity with ecological principles and physical laws in mind

  • Design to optimize health and adaptability

  • Design with efficiency and effectiveness for a no waste world that runs off of clean and renewable energy, contributes to diversity, recognizes inter-dependencies and taps the power of limits

  • Empower people and groups

  • Envision, strategize and plan

  • Facilitate a shared understanding of sustainability and regeneration

  • Take responsibility for the difference you make

  • Practice justice and equity for all

  • Take responsibility for the effect you have on future generations

  • Act wisely individually and collectively, with precaution and in context

  • Create and maintain highly functional and successful teams

  • Listen to one another

  • Serve your community

Community Connections

  • Develop sustainable community visions and re-visions over time

  • Map community assets and conduct needs assessments

  • Consider and prepare for a range of potential future scenarios, while charting a course toward the preferred future

  • Develop, measure and monitor SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic & time bound) goals and sustainable community indicator sets. Schools data is embedded in social, ecological and economic indicator sets

  • Co-Design and implement short and long term projects and programs that are mutually beneficial to partners, are inclusive of all stakeholders and are participatory in nature

  • Evaluate progress (read the feedback), reflect, adjust, and continually improve performance

  • Students and teachers make authentic contributions to sustainable community development through service learning opportunities, project-based and place based learning opportunities for students that are laterally and vertically embedded in the core curriculum

  • Regularly and publicly recognize and celebrate individual and collective successes, and progress toward green schools and sustainable community goals at events and in the media

  • Make time to reflect on where we are, how we got here, how far we have come, how close we are to where we are going, and what we are going to do next