ABSTRACT Designing controlled experiments is central to scientific investigation, yet little is known about how students change their experimentation strategies as they work through a simulation‐based task and how different patterns of strategy use relate to investigation‐relevant reasoning. To address these gaps, we examined the strategies used by N = 681 middle and high school students in the United States as they used the Wildfire Explorer simulation to investigate how vegetation type affects wildfire spread. Students' time‐stamped interaction logs captured how they configured and conducted simulation trials. We used k‐means clustering to identify strategy profiles, full‐path sequence mining and heuristic process mining to characterize how strategies were organized over time, and multilevel models to examine associations with observation accuracy, evidence quality, and explanation level. We identified four strategy profiles characterized by low‐frequency use of coded strategies, one‐spark experimentation, mixed use dominated by three‐spark noncontrastive configurations, and near‐exclusive use of standard vary‐one‐thing‐at‐a‐time configurations. Adding profile membership improved model fit for all three reasoning outcomes after accounting for students' background characteristics and teacher‐level clustering. Relative to the low‐frequency profile, the standard vary‐one‐thing‐at‐a‐time profile was positively associated with all three outcomes; the two intermediate profiles showed more selective associations. Together, these findings show that students' experimentation differed in both variable control and the generation of observable comparative evidence, variation that would be obscured by a simple optimal‐versus‐suboptimal classification. These profiles provide a differentiated account of students' investigation practices and identify patterns that could be examined in future studies of instructional support.
ABSTRACT In recent decades, increasing environmental challenges have underscored the importance of ecological literacy. However, limited research has examined how it develops over time or why students exhibit different developmental patterns. This study addresses this gap by identifying patterns of ecological literacy development and examining how they are shaped within the Process–Person–Context–Time (PPCT) framework. Using a mixed‐methods longitudinal design, ecological literacy was assessed across three survey waves ( n = 464), and students were classified into four types based on mean scores and variability: Consistent High, Consistent Low, Improved, and Declined. Following the third survey, a 4‐week ecological activity intervention was implemented, and qualitative data from interviews, student artifacts, and video recordings were analyzed to examine how group‐specific characteristics were shaped through proximal processes. The findings show that patterns differ in the stability and quality of proximal processes and can be interpreted as combinations of personal and situational conditions, resulting in four interpretive categories. Consistent high achievers showed sustained, self‐initiated engagement supported by recurring interactions, whereas consistent low achievers showed limited engagement and weak ecological sensitivity. Improved achievers showed increasing engagement through repeated but context‐dependent interactions, while declined achievers showed reduced engagement associated with decreased opportunities and academic demands. These results suggest that ecological literacy development is shaped not only by exposure to ecological activities but by how such experiences are supported, internalized, and sustained through proximal processes. By integrating longitudinal classification with qualitative analysis, this study highlights the role of sustained social and environmental interactions in shaping students' ecological development.
ABSTRACT Science education often approaches climate change as a scientific issue, disconnected from its multidimensional nature and lived realities. As climate‐related disasters intensify, teachers must help students confront climate challenges by connecting scientific learning to local contexts and addressing embedded systemic injustices. However, research is needed to explore how situated lived experiences shape teachers' pedagogical perspectives, responsibility, and hope toward community‐based, justice‐oriented climate learning opportunities. This study centers the voices and experiences of Bedouin indigenous teachers who are themselves minoritized and serve students living in the same context. Drawing upon critical narrative inquiry, we examine how these teachers make sense of place‐based climate change experiences as residents, parents, and community members, and how these experiences inform their pedagogical perspectives and the sociopolitical tensions therein. Our findings reveal that teachers' sense of place shapes how they experience climate change through their cultural connections to land, witnessing environmental degradation, and experiencing systemic vulnerability. They contextualize climate education in ways reflecting community concerns, lived experiences, and assets. However, their sense of place embodies tensions between cultural identity and social exclusion, with climate change acting as a threat multiplier that intensifies existing vulnerabilities. Teachers expressed the burden of confronting multiple oppressions that constrain their agency. They navigate complex positions as members of vulnerable communities, “a Bedouin living this tragedy,” while simultaneously operating within oppressive structures, including schools, policies, and colonial scientific frameworks. By foregrounding a sense of place, our study offers new ways for understanding how teachers position themselves within climate issues and what justice‐oriented climate education can look like in their communities. Place‐based perspectives can support locally grounded, transformative pedagogies by recognizing minoritized teachers as local knowledge holders. We argue that science education must recognize teachers as transformative agents and foster critical hope that enables them to navigate structural barriers while sustaining transformative possibilities.
ABSTRACT In the United States, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) call for science classrooms where students develop a wide range of skills, though students still often hold to narrow views of what it means to be good at science. Science identity provides a lens to examine what students believe being good at science means. A widely used framework describes science identity through the dimensions of competence, performance, and recognition. Many studies have found that recognition is a key element of a science identity. In spite of the clear importance of recognition, there has been little effort to describe what it looks like, especially between peers. This study used video of students working in small groups in a high school physics classroom and interviews with several of the students to develop a framework for peer recognition. The types of recognition students gave each other were categorized as explicit recognition, typically given for an answer or contribution students saw as correct, and implicit recognition, typically given over an extended period for contributions including asking questions and sharing incorrect ideas. The interviews provided insights into how students connected recognition to their science identity. When discussing what it meant to be good at physics or discussing the ways their peers were good at physics, students demonstrated a broad view of competence and performance that encompassed contributions that received both explicit and implicit recognition. When they discussed their own competence and performance, students primarily discussed the kinds of contributions that elicited explicit recognition. In addition, students primarily discussed explicit recognition when describing recognition they received. This suggests that finding ways to expand the kinds of contributions students receive explicit recognition for may be one way to expand what it means to be a science person.
