Progression in Complexity: Contextualizing Sustainable Marine Resources Management in a 10th Grade Classroom

Sustainable management of marine resources raises great challenges. Working with this socio-scientific issue in the classroom requires students to apply complex models about energy flow and trophic pyramids in order to understand that food chains represent transfer of energy, to construct meanings for sustainable resources management through discourse, and to connect them to actions and decisions in a real-life context. In this paper we examine the process of elaboration of plans for resources management in a marine ecosystem by 10th grade students (15-16 year) in the context of solving an authentic task. A complete class (N = 14) worked in a sequence about ecosystems. Working in small groups, the students made models of energy flow and trophic pyramids, and used them to solve the problem of feeding a small community for a long time. Data collection included videotaping and audiotaping of all of the sessions, and collecting the students' written productions. The research objective is to examine the process of designing a plan for sustainable resources management in terms of the discursive moves of the students across stages in contextualizing practices, or different degrees of complexity (Jim,nez-Aleixandre & Reigosa International Journal of Science Education, 14(1): 51-61 2006), understood as transformations from theoretical statements to decisions about the plan. The analysis of students' discursive moves shows how the groups progressed through stages of connecting different models, between them and with the context, in order to solve the task. The challenges related to taking this sustainability issue to the classroom are discussed.