What Didn’t Make it Into the GSS Guides and Why

by Cary Sneider, Vice President for Programs,
Museum of Science, Boston

NSTA, March, 2003

Now that all nine Student Guides and Teacher Guides for the Global Systems Science course are complete and available online, it may be instructive to take one last glance at the ideas that did not make the final cut. For example, the first GSS prototype was entitled "Planet Under Siege." It focused primarily on global warming, and emphasized dire consequences that were predicted if, in fact, the Earth is heating up. The scientists who reviewed the guide objected strongly to the title, pointing out that: 1) even if the planet is warming up, the planet itself is not in danger; 2) at the time—the early 1990s—the evidence was not yet conclusive that human activities were having a discernable effect on the climate; and 3) we needed to take a more balanced approach, letting our readers see the evidence, and make their own decisions. We changed the title to the more neutral, "Changing Climate."

When our first group of 25 teachers came to Berkeley for a three-week institute on Global Systems Science, they pointed out that each of the Student Guides was far too long. In order to be used flexibly, the modules should be much shorter, and each should have fewer main ideas. We consequently rewrote and split "Changing Climate" into three guides—"New World View," about systems thinking, "Changing Climate," about global warming and the greenhouse effect, and "Life and Climate," about the history of Earth’s climate and the evolution of life. Later, we created a concept map for the series, so that teachers could immediately see how the key concepts in each of the modules fit together. The concept map itself changed over time as we wrote, tested, and revised the entire series.

There were other changes too, though perhaps not as great as these. We knew that the concepts of negative and positive feedback were important, but the terms were somewhat counter-intuitive, and difficult to grasp in the abstract. Keeping in mind that these guides are for all students in grades nine to ten, we didn’t want to alienate students, and teach them that science is HARD. So, we removed this section from the introductory guide and wove the ideas into the other guides in the context of actual global issues that illustrated positive and negative feedback.

Among the most difficult changes to incorporate involved the constant flow of recent scientific findings. The science of global systems is cutting edge; and there are always new findings to incorporate. One approach is to "update" the guides by putting these new findings onto our web page. Another is to "revise" the guides, by incorporating new findings into the text. An example is the many recent discoveries of early human remains in Africa. An article about these changes by Jeremy deSilva will be published in October, 2003, in The American Biology Teacher, and overhead transparency masters illustrating different theories of human evolution will be placed on the Museum of Science website. We expect to link these ideas to update the GSS Student Guide "Life and Climate." Later we can update the guide itself to incorporate these new ideas. If we are successful, the process of updating and revision will never stop—so that the Global Systems Science series itself exemplifies of the nature and process of science.

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