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	<em>With the school year upon us, we thought it appropriate to delve into the science education millions of North American students are receiving. &nbsp;We asked two former&nbsp;<a href="">Au Sable graduate fellows</a>&nbsp;-- Jonathon Schramm, Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Environmental Education at Goshen College, and Sara Wyse, Assistant Professor of Biological Science at Bethel University -- who study science and environmental education to discuss science education today. &nbsp;They&#39;ve chosen to take up two conversations. &nbsp;First, in Part 1 below, they discuss the new&nbsp;<a href="">Next Generation Science Standards</a>, a set of science education standards developed by the National Research Council in collaboration with 26 partner states that US states can voluntarily adopt. &nbsp;In Part 2, they&#39;ll discuss how to increase environmental literacy at Christian colleges.</em></p>
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	<strong>Jonathon Schramm:</strong> Sara, the days are cooling, the morning fogs are forming, and students are returning to high schools and college campuses across the nation. It&rsquo;s an exciting time to be involved in education, and a great time to reflect on what works well in our society&rsquo;s educational systems, and what doesn&rsquo;t. In both high school and college settings, it seems like there is abundant talk about reforming the way we teach, especially in the sciences. Not coincidentally, we are also facing unprecedented large-scale environmental issues such as global climate change, which have numerous connections to scientific knowledge as well as to our social and economic structures.</p>
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	<strong>Sara Wyse:</strong> Yes, the change in weather - and the series of phenologic activities that take place in the fall do certainly set the stage for the beginning of another academic year. &nbsp;The fall is almost more of a &quot;new year&quot; feeling for me than January, and provides a good time to think about goals and aims for the upcoming year. &nbsp;Having just come out of our faculty retreat, working with both new and returning faculty, I sense a desire and commitment to undergraduate education. &nbsp;My colleagues are passionate about their work, and excited to engage in conversations and hopefully subsequent application of research-backed classroom pedagogies. &nbsp;Seeing this commitment from my colleagues is encouraging to me, because, as you mentioned, we have been talking about changing the way we teach science in K-12 and college educations for years.</p>
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	<strong>Jonathon:</strong> Knowing your background in both the sciences and educational research, I would love to hear your thoughts on some of this changing landscape. For instance, what is your take on the <a href="http://www.nextgenscience.org">Next Generation Science Standards</a>? It seems to me that one of the major new features of these proposed standards is emphasizing science practice on the same level as science content. I sometimes felt that although teaching students about how science works was always a part of standards, it often played second fiddle to the content. It seems clear from many studies of public knowledge about science that there are many misunderstandings about science as a process, and I&rsquo;m hopeful that a science curriculum which emphasizes depth of understanding over breadth of coverage might better prepare more of us as citizens for the coming challenges. Of course, maybe I&rsquo;m being na&iuml;ve here, since the standards haven&rsquo;t even been finalized and we&rsquo;re certainly a long ways from finalized curricula in schools. What do you think? Is this best practice?</p>
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	<strong>Sara:</strong> I had a chance to take a look and review the Next Generation Science Standards this summer, and I have to say, they left me hopeful for what knowledge, skills and competencies future incoming freshman could bring into our college classrooms. &nbsp;I was struck by two things in the standards: (1) the integrated and threaded nature of the standards, and (2) the emphasis on, as you said, practices. &nbsp;Biology is filled with common themes, and these themes (e.g., structure-function) can be investigated across grades; I was pleased to see that integrative nature and theme-focus in these standards. &nbsp;Secondly, as you said, these new standards really emphasize how science is practiced. &nbsp;Practices like modeling, argumentation, and the interpretation of data are specifically mentioned in the standards, and therefore, likely to be assessed in our students. &nbsp;While the &quot;nature of science&quot; was always a part of the standards, it was typically separated from the content of our discipline. &nbsp;The revision allows students to do science as science is practiced while embracing content exploration at the same time. &nbsp;This, I think and hope, has the potential to change perspectives about what science is (e.g., more than a body of facts to be learned) and inspire students who want to use the methods and processes of science to explore and learn about the world in which we live. &nbsp;</p>
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	Whether these standards better prepares citizens, that does remain to be seen. &nbsp;It encourages me that as a field we are realizing what we&#39;ve been doing hasn&#39;t been preparing the scientifically literate public that we need to engage with today&#39;s (and future) challenges, and that we are taking significant steps to move in that direction. &nbsp;Standards will drive new assessments, and new assessments will ultimately drive new instructional approaches in the classrooms. &nbsp;This will require significant professional development for both pre-service and practicing teachers, something I have also heard ongoing conversations about. &nbsp;</p>
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	<strong>Jonathon:</strong> I couldn&rsquo;t agree with you more on the interaction between new science standards, assessments and teacher professional development. They are all so tightly related, and it can sometimes seem like the educational system is way too cumbersome to respond in anything resembling a speedy fashion. On the other hand, I too draw a lot of hope from seeing these connections, as they suggest numerous specific things we can do to change the way students learn about the world. And as you so aptly put it, we really have no choice but to have hope that we can begin to be better stewards in time! It is my prayer that we will see that day come.</p>
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	<em><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><strong>Jonathon Schramm</strong>, a native of mid-Michigan, has an academic background in ecology and ecology education, where he has studied phenomena from the effect of non-native plant species in forests to the sources and strengths of non-scientific reasoning in students&#39; thinking about ecology. This summer he and his family moved to Goshen, IN, where he is teaching sustainability and environmental education at the Merry Lea Center of Goshen College. He is particularly glad, though, that Goshen lies in that small part of Indiana which is in the Great Lakes watershed, so it feels much like home!</span></em></p>
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	<em><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><strong>Sara Wyse</strong> found her love for science outdoors while first a camper and later a junior naturalist at Westwood Hills Nature Center. &nbsp;Summer courses at Au Sable Institute were a natural fit during her undergraduate education and propelled Sara to complete her PhD at Michigan State University in Plant Biology. &nbsp;Sara was an Au Sable Graduate Fellow at MSU before becoming an Assistant Professor of Biology at Bethel University. &nbsp;Currently, her research focuses on professional development of faculty and graduate teaching assistants as well as student learning in biology, including <a href="http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2012/0224sp_leaves.shtml">a prize from Science magazine for Inquiry-Based Instruction</a>.</span></em></p>
