Teaching

GSS Teacher Guides

...are available as web pages on a special GSS Teacher site. The Teacher Guides have many additional Investigations with pages you can copy and provide your students. The Teacher Guides explain:

  • How can I customize GSS for my students?
  • How can I sequence the Guides in a one year course?
  • What will my students learn?
  • What teaching methods should I use?
  • How can I assess student learning?
  • How is GSS related to science education reform?
  • What support do I need to implement GSS?
  • Who created GSS and how was it created?

Since they have some material not intended for students, we restrict access to the GSS Teacher site, but you may gain access for free by sending a message requesting such access to Alan Gould:

Alan Gould's e-mail addressIn your message, please state your first & last name, school, city, and state.

Professional Development Overview

Professional development for Global Systems Science teachers began with summer institutes in 1993, 1994, and 1995. You may read an excellent overview of the principles and philosophy of those institutes, written by the first GSS Director, Cary Sneider, as an illustration of an exemplary professional development program for a landmark 1998 book on professional development by Susan Loucks-Horsley, Peter W. Hewson, Nancy Love, and Katherine E. Stiles: Designing Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics. Read specifically Resource D: Global Systems Science: A Professional Development Program for High School Teachers (pages 289–294 of the 1998 edition)

Lifelines for High School Climate Change Education

Lifelines for High School Climate Change Education logoThis was a NASA grant project, 2010–2013. Project Goals: 

  • establish a network of practicing high school teachers actively using climate change curricula—create professional learning communities (PLCs) of teachers 
  • hold remote (travel-less) meetings and workshops as much as possible 
  • explore techniques to achieve the most effective teleconferencing meetings and workshops. 
  • practice what we preach: promote not only teaching about minimizing environmental impacts of human activity, but minimize environmental impacts of professional development. 
  • maintain ongoing communication and sharing of best practices among colleagues
  • strengthen knowledge and promote effective teaching strategies during and beyond the actual grant period. 
  • as a project of the NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE), Lifelines incorporates analysis of NASA Earth observation data by students in classrooms.

The project was designed with a cascading effect, recruiting and training 20 climate change education teacher leaders who then form the PLCs comprised of 15 high school science teachers, for a total of 320 teachers involved in the project. 

GSS Conference

View the proceedings from the 2003 GSS Conference in Philadelphia.