Domain Strand

Content Standard

Potential Project Application(s)

I: Science as Inquiry

1. Doing Scientific Inquiry

Students demonstrate scientific inquiry skills engaging in interactive slide show (questioning) and forming hypotheses about native and introduced plants and arthropods brought in for description. Students are researching the unknown of where ants are located (not even the instructor knows the answers) and independently collecting and interpreting these data.

I: Habits of Mind

2. Living the Values, Attitudes and Commitments of the Inquiring Mind

Using sensory perception and descriptive observation, students apply inquiry to determining the mode of colonization of native flora and fauna. Students will formulate hypotheses and discuss ways these hypotheses could be tested.

3. Using Unifying Concepts and Themes

Students will use the unifying concepts and themes of change and scale in discussions on environmental change and planning. It is not colonization per se but instead the massive increase in species colonization rates since human contact that has dramatic impacts on biological systems.

I: Safety

4. Doing Safety

Safety concerns are explicitly addressed in the ant collection exercise and in forming hypotheses about methods for controlling pest species.

I: Science and Technology

5. Relating the Nature of Technology to Science

Students will be exposed to the ecological crisis of increased introductions of alien species due to advances in transportation technology. In more advanced exercises, students may plan alternative solutions for this crisis, predict the consequences of these actions, and evaluate effectiveness of actions, if taken.

II: Historical Persepctives

1. Understanding Scientific Inquiry and the Character of Scientific Knowledge

Students will participate in scientific inquiry leading to formation of new scientific knowledge through the slide-based discussion, group plant and arthropod description projects, and independent ant collection.

2. Interdependence of Science, Technology and Society

Students can analyze and evaluate the interdependence of science, technology, and society by taking part in a conservation project necessitated by increase in human global travel.

3. Malama I Ka Aina: Sustainability

Students will engage in discussions concerning the conservation of resources in Hawaii. When people and products are transported around the globe, this has unpredictable and predictable consequences that ought to be considered.

II: Organisms and Development

5. Interdepedence

Native Hawaiian ecosystems are interdependent, and competition with introduced species within their carrying capacity may negatively affect native species in direct and indirect ways.