What learning progressions tell us about students' ability to participate in the global climate change and biofuels debates

What learning progressions tell us about students' ability to participate in the global climate change and biofuels debates

Our society is currently having serious debates about sources of energy and global climate change. But do students (and the public) have the requisite knowledge to engage these issues as informed citizenry? The learning progressions research summarized here indicates that only 10% of high school students typically have a level of understanding commensurate with that called for in The Next Generation Science Standards. The learning progression research shows how most students fall short of being able to trace matter and energy through carbon-transforming processes such as photosynthesis, respiration, and combustion that are at the center of analyses of our usage of different energy sources and global climate change. We discuss the implications of this for teaching.