1. Charles W. Anderson Michigan State University
A Cross-cultural Study: Comparing Learning Progression for Carbon-Transforming Processes of American and Chinese Student
Hui Jin
Li Zhan
Charles W. Anderson Michigan State University
Good afternoon, everyone. The topic of my presentation is “Comparing learning progression for carbon-transforming process of US and China”. It is well known that Global warming is one of the most serious environmental problems that every country has to face and deal with, especially for United States and China, two largest carbon-emitted countries in the world. As a education researcher, we want to explore how Chinese and American students, as future citizen, understand about carbon-transforming which is related to global warming. (变中美学生) 1

2. Research Questions
How do K-12 students from the US and China reason about carbon-transforming process?
How do American and Chinese students progress? How are their progress patterns similar or different?
What could be possible factors that affect students’ progress patterns?
Based on what we interested, we establish three research questions: 1.,,,,,,, 2.,,,,,,,,3,,,,,,,,,

3. Research Focus: Carbon-transforming Processes
Our interview research focuses on students’ understanding of seven macroscopic events. Tree growth is explained by the process of photosynthesis, in which organic carbon is generated. Baby girl growth is explained by the processes of digestion and biosynthesis, in which organic carbon is transformed and energy is passed on. Girl running, tree growth, flame burning and car running are explained by the process of cellular respiration and combustion, in which organic carbon oxidized and energy dissipated. Light lighting is a cross processes which includes all these processes.

4. Culture and Education in US and China 1. Language
Both English and Chinese have implicit theories of cause and action—force-dynamic reasoning (Pinker, 2007; Dai, 2005)
Sunlight
Air
Soil
Water
There are many differences and similarities between US and China. Among them, we choose two important factors which will influence students’ understanding most: culture and education. We specify language on culture area. Cognitive linguist study English grammar and Chinese grammar and found that both languages have implicit theories of cause and action, which reflect force-dynamic reasoning as hui mentioned before.
Result: Tree growth

5. Culture and Education in US and China 2. Educational Approach
Due to the pressure from entrance examinations, Chinese teachers use much more written assessments with students. Classroom teaching is concentrated on practice for examinations.
From education aspect, Chinese teacher push students to memory principles and formula in textbooks because of pressure from entrance exam. Classroom teaching is concentrated on practice for exam, just as left picture shows. While American teachers have more choice and rights to decide what to do in the class. 5

6. Research Methods
After showing research background, I will introduce research methods as the following:

7. Interview protocol
Interview protocol: two set of Interview questions to uncover students intuitive accounts:
Lower-level Questions:
What does the tree need in order to grow?
You said that the tree needs air to grow. Then how does air help the tree to grow?
Do you think that the air will change into other materials inside the tree’s body?
The tree gets heavier as it grows. How does that happen?
Follow-up Higher-level Questions:
If the student mentions glucose/starch/sugar/cellulose/carbohydrates, ask: Do you think it contains carbon atoms? If yes, where does that carbon atom come from?
If the student associate sunlight with energy, ask: Where does the light energy go? Do you think it is used up, becomes other things, or else?
First, we design the interview protocol based on seven events I talked before. There are two set of interview questions to uncover students understanding. First, we ask students lower-level question such as:,,,,,,,,,, If students’ responses indicate that they have some higher understanding of matter or energy, we will ask follow-up questions, such as “Do you think it contain carbon atoms?,,,,,,,,

8. Research Participants
US students
8 elementary school students, 8 middle school students and 8 high school students
Level
Number
School
Elementary 8
Two rural public schools
Middle
High
One is math and science center
Another one is rural public school
China students
8 elementary school students, 8 middle school students and 8 high school students from urban school
We use interview protocol to interview 24 American students and 24 Chinese students from elementary, middle and high schools.
Level
Number
School
Elementary 8
Urban school (low socioeconomic)
Middle
Rural school
High
Urban school (selective school)

9. Data Analysis Step 1: Develop the coding rubrics—exemplar worksheet
Step 2: Use rubric to code data and conduct reliability check (Eight graduate students coded American data; The first two authors coded Chinese data).
Step 3: Generate distribution graphs to depict learning trajectories
After interview, we analyze the data based on three steps. First, we develop the coding rubric and exemplar worksheet. Then we use rubric to code data and conduct reliability check. Eight graduate students in our research group coded American data and the first two authors of this paper coded Chinese data. After coding, we generate distribution graph to describe learning trajectories in the finding part.

10. Findings
So let’s see our findings.

11. Naming and Explaining as Progress Variables
Explaining Progress Variable (nature of the accounts): The performance of using specific reasoning patterns to construct the accounts
Naming Progress Variable: The performance of verbatim reproduction of vocabulary.
So the first finding is naming and explaining as progress variables. We find the naming and explaining are more effective for comparing American and Chinese students’ different accounts than matter and energy. Explaining progress variable is the performance of using specific reasoning patterns to construct the accounts. Naming progress variable describes how students use both informal and scientific vocabulary in accounts.

12. Pattern: Discrepancy of Development (Secondary Level)
Naming Explaining
These two graphs show the percentage of account units along the explaining and naming progress variables at secondary level. The straight line is naming and dash-line is explaining. You can see that the development of Naming is ahead of the development of explaining, especially for Chinese students. There are more account units reach level 3 and 4 naming levels, while relatively fewer account units reach explaining level 3 and 4. Level 3 and Level 4 Naming means that students are using scientific words to construct explanations.

13. Pattern: Discrepancy of Development (Secondary Level)
Organic molecules
Energy forms
Chemical Processes
Chinese Accounts
glucose,
carbohydrate
glycogen
monosaccharide
light energy
electrical energy
kinetic/motion energy (动能, Level 2.5)
chemical energy
oxidation
cellular respiration (呼吸作用, Level 2.5)
combustion (燃烧, Level 2.5)
light reaction, dark reaction
American Accounts
glucose
cellulose
Light energy
kinetic energy
combustion
So we investigated the specific scientific words American and Chinese students used. We found that Chinese students tend to use more scientific words about organic molecules, energy forms and chemical processes. From the table, you can see that American students are using a subset of words that Chinese students used.

14. Pattern: Discrepancy of Development (Elementary Level)
Explaining
Naming
Chinese elementary school interview
American elementary school pre interview
There are also discrepancy of development in both groups at the elementary school level, but the graphs show the same pattern for American and Chinese students. You can see that in both US and China, elementary students tend to rely on level 1 explaining and level 1 naming.
Both Chinese and American elementary school students tend toward Level 1 in explaining performance 14

15. Pattern: Discrepancy of Development (Example)
Naming Level 2; Explaining Level 1
Girl Running: Chinese interview (4th grader)
Researcher: Ok. So, how does the food help her to run? LJQ: The foods provide nutrients to make her body strong. Then she can run. Researcher: Do you think air can help her to run? LJQ: Yes. We inhale carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide has nutrients in it. Researcher: Ok. Do you think the carbon dioxide will change when it goes into the girl's body? LJQ: [Silence] Researcher: That's fine. Let's look at the other picture.
This is an example of naming higher than explaining. LJQ named two words “nutrient” and “carbon dioxide”, there are the level 2 words in naming. However, she didn’t use these two words to describe any hidden mechanism that involve changes of matter and energy. She describe nutrient as a macroscopic enabler that makes the girl’s body strong. Although she mentioned carbon dioxide, she claimed that carbon dioxide have nutrients in it. These indicate that she use macroscopic force-dynamic reasoning to explain how nutrients and carbon dioxide help the girl to grow. Food and carbon dioxide are enablers, they both contain nutrient that make the girl’s body strong.

16. Pattern: Discrepancy of Development (Example 2)
Naming Level 3; Explaining Level 2
Baby Girl Growth: Chinese interview (6th grader)
Researcher: Could you talk more about the process of digestion? XYW: The useful and nutritious materials of food are extracted and separated from useless materials. Useless materials are expelled outside of the body. … …
Researcher: Where does that energy come from? XYW: It comes from food. Food has starch. That's carbohydrates. The body absorbs them. That provides people energy. Researcher: What do you mean by carbohydrates? XYW: Like rice has starch. Researcher: Do you think water is also carbohydrate? XYW: It seems water is not. Researcher: Why? XYW: Human body needs six important classes of substances. Water and carbohydrates are in different classes. Researcher: Ok. Do you think carbohydrates are composed of atoms or molecules? XYW: I don't know.
The student used the scientific word—carbohydrates. So, he is at Naming Level 3. When the researcher asked him whether water is carbohydrates, he said that water is not, but his justification for that is : human body…… You can see that he did not explain in terms of the structure of molecules. If you look at the words in blue, you will see that his reasoning is: the useful stuff like nutrients are extracted out from foods and useless materials are expelled outside of the body. He did not reason in terms of molecules. This is level 2 explaining.

17. Implication
Although American and Chinese students came from different cultural and educational contexts, they tended to rely on similar intuitive reasoning patterns (force-dynamic) to account for environmental events.
Intensive science learning in Chinese schools helps students to memorize scientific vocabulary but does not effectively help them to develop scientific reason
There are two main implications from the pattern. First,,,,,,, second,,,,,

18. Environmental Literacy Research Project
Jing Chen, Kennedy Onyacha, Hamin Beak, Jonathon Schramm, Jennifer Doherty, Dante Cisterna from Michigan State University; Karen Draney, Mark Wilson, Jinnie Choy, Yongsang Lee from University of California, Berkeley