Most contemporary reforms in American science education center around ideas of improving student science literacy (Dauer & Forbes, 2016) with the goal of enabling informed engagement on scientific issues (NRC, 2012). This is particularly true for decisions that affect the public interest, including public health, the environment, and the economy (Rudolph & Horibe, 2016). Contemporary research about science learning is synthesized in the Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) which advocates for three-dimensional science learning. This consists of a seamless combination of disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts (NRC, 2012).Decisions made by American agriculturalists have a disproportionately large impact on the public interest. Rural landscapes comprise most of nation's land area (Merrill & Leatherby, 2018) and are vital for food production, mitigating climate change, and energy production (Lal et al., 2011). Rural landscapes contain most of the nation's wildlife habitat (NRCS, 2020), much of which is threatened by conversion into farmland (Stubbs, 2014; USDA, 2016). Additionally, conventional agriculture exacerbates stresses to natural systems, threatening food production over the long term (Lengnick, 2015). Three-dimensional agriscience instruction could be useful for preparing agriculture students to improve food production for its long-term viability and ecological sustainability. The agricultural education instructional model may provide opportunities to provide three-dimensional science learning that is more responsive to students' individual identities and experiences.This dissertation study reports on the results of a design-based research (DBR) project involving how a NGSS-aligned agro-ecology course prepared secondary students in three focus groups to explain and manage ecosystems in rural agricultural landscapes. The intent was to determine students' changing capacities to define problems that can affect agriculture due to reductions to biodiversity, ecosystem services, carrying capacity, and resilience. Students were prompted to provide three-dimensional performances in focus group interviews to demonstrate their capacities for reasoning and decision-making about agro-ecological phenomena.In addition to the sophistication of their responses, I analyzed student performances using three criteria: framing: the perspectives from which students were perceiving and interpreting the interview questions; transfer: students' capacities to connect ideas and practices from the curriculum to authentic contexts; and discourse: how students engaged in opportunities to express their ideas and build on one another's responses.While students in all three focus groups learned through the same curriculum, differences in implementation resulted in different outcomes among these students. My findings allude to the challenges inherent in enabling more informed decision-making through three-dimensional science learning, which may necessitate considerations beyond the classroom itself. Student performances appear to be at least partly determined by opportunities to reason about problems from multiple perspectives, to gain experience in applying classroom knowledge and practice to authentic contexts, and to collaborate to deepen their comprehension and develop more sophisticated responses.
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