Bringing current science into the classroom

How your students can experience current environmental research without leaving the classroom.

By Michele Kloda

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Bringing current science into the classroom

Activities for middle and high school on groundwater, water quality, and environmental stewardship have students exploring current environmental research without leaving the classroom.

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• Superfund Basic Research Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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One of the most exciting things about being a science teacher is the nature of science itself. A dynamic discipline, science and scientific endeavors evolve as researchers continue to make discoveries and ask new questions about the world around us. When we incorporate current science topics and research into our lessons, we can motivate students to learn and sometimes even change their attitudes about science. For instance, students who are exposed to current scientific research questions and methods discover that we live in a world with more questions than answers. Students can apply their critical reasoning skills and creativity to discuss the scientists’ questions, design experiments, and test hypotheses — an empowering experience for student and teacher alike. This article features resources for teaching environmental science, particularly at the middle and high school level, where the topics of groundwater, water quality, and environmental stewardship are common throughout the Standard Course of Study. These resources provide current information about scientific research and how it can be incorporated into your science curricula to encourage scientific inquiry among your students.

The Standard Course of Study and real science

The North Carolina Standard Course of Study in Science supports the use of current scientific research in classroom lessons through several of its curriculum program strands. In The Nature of Science, students are expected to learn that science is a human endeavor, involving women and men of all ages, backgrounds, and points of view. Through exposure to research scientists and their ideas (especially those happening in our state), students can see themselves as scientists or develop an interest in answering a specific question. Students may then be more likely to explore science as a career. In Science and Technology, students are expected to understand the need for and use of technology in scientific research. When students are presented with a real set of questions and the tools that scientists are using to help answer those questions, it often takes the mystery out of what scientists do and makes science more approachable for more students. The program strand Science as Inquiry suggests that presenting students with the same problems that scientists are trying to solve and asking for their ideas and solutions models the scientific process.

The Superfund Basic Research Program

University campuses are typically hotbeds of scientific research, and North Carolina campuses are no exception. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP) conducts scientific research and also offers workshops, activities and resources for teachers on Superfund-related issues. The SBRP comprises scientists who are researching new methods to better understand and clean up hazardous waste sites. Superfund is a national environmental program, started in 1980, to fund cleanup of our country’s most contaminated hazardous waste sites. Large companies pay a tax to the federal government that is then reserved for Superfund cleanup efforts when a polluter cannot be identified. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with managing the Superfund program by identifying, cleaning, and monitoring our nation’s Superfund sites.

As part of its outreach activities, the SBRP designed a workshop titled What’s in the Water? to provide middle and high school science teachers with information and activities on Superfund sites in North Carolina. Over 50 percent of all North Carolinians rely on groundwater for their drinking water supply, so these lessons focus on the contamination of groundwater by hazardous substances. Through discussion and hands-on activities, teachers learn of relevant concepts such as environmental health risk, hazardous waste, groundwater, and chemical concentration. They also gain an awareness of the research conducted by scientists in the UNC-Chapel Hill SBRP and how to share this information with students. The curriculum includes activities from the EPA, the Science Education for Public Understanding Program, and Project WET.