As a part of my NSF GK-12 Fellowship program I administered an anonymous survey to approximately one hundred 7th Grade students on their first day in a formal middle school science class. The survey was administered prior to any content was discussed and therefore represents the students’ preconceptions. This survey is part of a larger project and I will not give away too much of the information here, but rather provide a synopsis of what 7th Graders worry about and think can be approached through science discoveries and engineering solutions. The data (words and sentences) were coded by theme and sub theme by me over one morning so there has been no communication with collaborators and therefore these results should be considered preliminary and incomplete as they do not even represent the entire survey population (only those students at my particular school). I did this analysis for my own curiosity and preparedness as I am preparing lessons in this class. I am making this summary public on this blog for the possible benefit of other teachers or researchers as they think about issues of science, engineering, and education at all levels.
We asked the students to “list 3-5 problems/tasks that the world is facing that could be solved by the application of science, engineering and technology.” and to “list another 3-5 problems/tasks that your community/neighborhood/town is facing that could be solved by the application of the science, engineering, and technology.” Many ideas were single words or partial sentences so some of the coding was subjective as I had to make inferences about the significance. Some students (~10%) did not answer the question or put “I don’t know”. Many students only provided 1-2 ideas.
As I read the listed ideas I grouped them by categories and then by general themes. The final themes were: Discover, Natural Disasters, Ecosystem health, Pollution, Global Warming and Climate Change, Oil Spills, Societal Functioning, Energy and Transportation, and Building and Design. Themes contained 1-9 subcategories.
SUMMARY
SUMMARY
Energy, Transportation, Fuels, and related problems
21 respondents referred to either oil spills in general or the specific gulf oil spill which has been in the news. This was one of the larger response categories and probably reflects the impact of current news events on student’s thinking. This category could also be linked to others including finding new fossil fuels, using and finding new green energy sources, or improve transportation systems and cat efficiency. But I lumped those three categories separately under the theme Energy and Transportation. This theme received 53 responses, 4 were related to finding new fossil fuel sources. This idea was vastly overwhelmed by somewhat contrary ideas about improving transportation systems including busses, roads, car efficiency, car use (28 responses) and ideas about improving energy efficiency and finding new green energy sources such as solar (21 responses). Students appear to be highly concerned over energy consumption especially for transportation and they are hopeful that science and engineering will produce new greener solutions for energy and transportation!
Pollution
62 student responses referred to air pollution, water pollution, or access to clean water. Water and air responses were divided equally and were tied for the highest single response category (31 responses). Clearly pollution is near the top of 7th graders’ concerns for the world. The high rate of responses relating to these categories could be related to local air pollution problems or the recent linkage established to count CO2 as air pollution. Or perhaps students have discussed this problem at length in previous curriculum. I don’t know where it is coming from, but it is clearly a large problem in the world and they are aware. This category is also highly linked to responses about global warming and climate change (24 responses) and ecosystem health (24 responses). Within ecosystems students were only slightly more concerned over animal wellbeing (13 responses) rather than plant health (11 responses). This may indicate a sophisticated understanding of the systems that make up ecosystems?
Discovery
Some, but a minority of students put scientific discovery high on the agenda for the world (14 responses). Of these students either mentioned pure science discoveries (9 responses), space exploration (2 responses), or engineering science tools (3 responses).
Buildings, design
38 respondents referred to building/construction (10 responses), fixing and improving things in general (12 responses), and creating new improved electronics and computers (16 responses).
Natural Disasters
Natural Disasters were not very high on the students’ list of concerns with only four more responses than basic discovery (18 total responses). Of these they were quite spread out with students referring to landslides, fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, meteorite impacts, etc. Interestingly the only real repeat categories here were earthquakes and meteorite impacts which are heavily focused on by entertainment and educational TV.
Societal Functioning
Social function was very high on the list of concerns by students (111 responses). Responses were spread out among 9 categories suggesting that students are very concerned over these issues, but with slightly differing priorities. The most important categories included trash and liter (23 responses) which is also linked to ideas of overuse and pollution. Recycling, reducing, and reusing was brought up as a prominent concern, that it was not being done enough (14 responses). Improving health through preventing and curing diseases was prominent (18 responses) and crime and violence was also high on the students’ minds (17 responses). Other interesting ideas included improved park space, eradicating hunger and homelessness as well as improving the economy. The smaller response categories included war (both prevention and improved weapons), pest control (e.g. mosquitos), and immigration issues. It is interesting to me that students make the link between science, engineering and improving social functioning. This is a similar approach as the grand challenges of engineering. This may mean students have a sophisticated understanding of links between economy and technology and ideas about how science will help us fight disease. I also wonder what students are thinking when they imply that science and technology can improve trash and liter problems. I imagine they are linking back to efficiencies or recycling technologies, but I do not know.
Generally, social functioning was the most pressing response theme and probably represents the anthropocentric way that we as humans see ourselves within the world. However, it is balanced by issues of pollution, ecosystem functioning, and problems such as climate change. So there is at least a duality or perhaps even integration in how students see that we need to change and improve the world. I believe that this survey will be interesting to compare on the whole with science standards, NSF funding priorities, and AAAS grand challenges and I am looking forward to see how things change or don’t change after having taken this science course.
-Nathan A. Toke
Ph.D. Candidate in Geological Sciences and GK-12 Fellow
ASU 2010-2011
ASU 2010-2011
