System thinking and system modeling in the Earth system science classroom

Earth system science (ESS) is a holistic study of the Earth. ESS marshals the resources a variety of scientific and technical fields to explore interactions among the Earth´s component subsystems in order to understand the Earth as a system, to explain Earth dynamics and evolution, and to address the problem of the effects of human actions on global change. In order to investigate the Earth system, teachers and students need access to expertise in a broad variety of disciplines: chemistry, physics, computer science, biology, mathematics, statistics, and political science. A variety of relatively new skills are also required: networked computing, tools and techniques for retrieving, visualizing, and analyzing remote sensing data, and building dynamic systems models. The question of systems modeling became a central issue in curriculum development efforts of the Earth System Science Community (ESSC), a three-year project supported by NASA´s Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications and High Performance Computing and Communications programs. The thrust of the curriculum development effort was to enable students and teachers to conduct investigations in global change topics using remote sensing data gathered by NASA and other science agencies. The curriculum was project-based, with the intention of producing an authentic and living sense of understanding and participation in science research. Students and teachers were to collaborate on-line with their peers in other schools, and with scientists/mentors in universities and government science agencies. In this effort students and teachers become researchers and learn to design and carry out a research strategy, involving the proposal and articulation of a hypothesis, the building of a system model, and the search, retrieval, manipulation, visualization and analysis of appropriate data. Students conclude their research by testing their hypothesis with available data, using visualization software, and information available in print and on-line