SLRG is proud to announce the publication of our second special issue of The Earth Scientist (Fall 2020), focusing on the build-a-MEL activities. The team worked very hard to present the various activities and supporting articles in a clear and practical way that will support teachers in embarking on their own journey of using MEL and build-a-MEL scaffolds. The full issue can be found here, or you can read individual articles associated with specific activities (Assessments, Editor’s Corner, Extreme Weather, Fossils, Freshwater, Origins, Teaching MELs). Special thanks go to the SLRG team members who authored the articles, as well as to the TES team for supporting our efforts.

Citing the recently published handbook, The Debunking Handbook (2020) from George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, UMD College of Education reports:

Today’s society is overwhelmed with misinformation, and technology has only made it easier to spread. Undoing misinformation is difficult, so the best way to combat the spread is to equip people with the tools they need to distinguish the true from the not-so-true.

The Debunking Handbook 2020 aims to do just that by summarizing the current state of the science of misinformation and its debunking. There is little doubt that misinformation and “fake news” are currently undermining democracies around the world. Misinformation has particularly insidious psychological consequences because it often “sticks” in people’s memories even after it has been debunked, and even when people believe and acknowledge a correction.

The Debunking Handbook 2020 was written by a team of 22 prominent scholars for engaged citizens, policy makers, journalists, and other practitioners. Among the scholars is University of Maryland College of Education’s Dr. Doug Lombardi, associate professor in the Department of Human Development & Quantitative Methodology.

“In today’s information maelstrom, people struggle to determine scientific truthfulness. Debunking 2020 offers help, equipping readers with critical-analytical tools to fight weaponized information,” says Dr. Lombardi, a co-author on the handbook.

Read the rest of the article here.

Download the handbook here.

Dr. Lombardi is currently accepting graduate students for a Fall 2021 start at University of Maryland. Please see below for more information and reach out to Dr. Lombardi if interested in applying.

Dr. Donna Governor has published a new article on thematic and integrated instruction in the science classroom in Science and Children, the journal for the National Science Teaching Association. Check it out here and please reach out to Donna with any questions!

Governor, D. (2020). A Monarch Tapestry. Science and Children, 58(1).

This week, Dr. Donna Governor recorded a screencast for the blog QualPage (https://qualpage.com) that introduces grounded theory research. Dr. Governor is an assistant professor in the Middle Grades, Secondary and Science Education Department at the University of North Georgia and a co-PI on the MEL project.

Check out the screencast here.

Dr. Lombardi gave the Richard E. Snow Address at APA 2020, held virtually, on Scaffolding Students’ Scientific Thinking, featuring ongoing work from the MEL Project. Check out the presentation below:

Lombardi, D. (2020). Scaffolding scientific thinking. Paper invited for presentation at the 128th Annual American Psychological Association Convention; this paper was presented virtually due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Check out doctoral students’ Josh Medrano and Joshua Jaffe, master teachers’ Chris Roemmele and Margaret Holzer, and Doug Lombardi’s recent article about using the MEL to teach about water resources, recently published in the journal Water, special issue Water Literacy and Education.

The SLRG continues to be supportive of the various conferences being moved online due to the COVID-19 outbreak. We have collected our virtual presentations here, and we hope that you will find them useful. Please feel free to reach out to any of the authors!

ST&D 2020, July 21-22, Cyberspace

Medrano, J., Jaffe, J., & Lombardi, D. (2020). Does the evidence support the model? Examining the effectiveness of two instructional scaffolds in science classrooms.
Recorded Presentation

APA 2020, August 6-8, Washington, D.C.

Jaffe, J., Medrano, J., & Lombardi, D. (2020). Promoting scientific plausibility and knowledge shifts through modeled evaluation activities.
Recorded Presentation

Matewos, A., & Lombardi, D. (2020). Examining engagement of a small group discourse network during collaborative argumentation.

Citing a special issue article recently published in Educational Psychologist, UMD College of Education reports:

From the coronavirus pandemic to climate change and presidential elections, misinformation surrounding important issues and current events is a growing and worrisome problem. Misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 virus, for instance, has permeated social media and is even being perpetuated by some world leaders, prompting public health officials to correct inaccuracies.

Researchers like Doug Lombardi, associate professor in COE’s Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, likens today’s flood of misinformation as living in a ‘post-truth era,’ where conjecture and emotional appeal are more important than logic and scientific reasoning in influencing public opinion.

“It’s a perfect storm of information availability, particularly through social media, and the rapid way that we can each distribute information, such as through Twitter,” Dr. Lombardi said.

Read the rest of the article here.

Read the cited paper here.

The SLRG has been supportive of the various conference cancellations due to the COVID-19 outbreak, although we are disappointed to not be able to share our work more broadly. We have collected our intended presentations here, and we hope that you will find them useful. Please feel free to reach out to any of the authors!

NARST 2020, March 15-18, Portland, OR

Klavon, T. Relationships Between Students’ Scaffolded Small-Group Discussions and their Written Scientific Explanations.

Klavon, T., Bailey, J., Lombardi, D.,  & Dobaria, A. Students’ Plausibility Shifts and Knowledge Gains When Evaluating Competing Explanatory Models about Freshwater Resource Availability.

AERA 2020, April 18-21, San Francisco, CA
Matewos, A. A., Lombardi, D., Bailey, J. M., & Herrick, I. (2020). From science student to conceptual agent: Examining the individual shifts in engagement during scaffolded instruction.

Lombardi, D., & Bailey, J. M. (2020). Science strategy interventions. Poster accepted for presentation as part of the symposium, “Investigating strategies and strategy use: Where do we go from here?”