Page 157 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: Science, 2008 (revised)

B2. Developing Skills of Investigation and Communication
By the end of this course, students will:
B2.1 use appropriate terminology related to the application of scientific knowledge and proced- ures to environmental issues, including, but not limited to: fact, inference, paradigm, objectivity, and causality [C]
B2.2 plan and conduct a laboratory inquiry to test a scientific procedure used to address a contem- porary environmental problem (e.g., an oil spill, acid precipitation) [IP, PR, AI]
B2.3 investigate, through research or using case studies or computer simulation, how scientific knowledge and procedures are applied to address a particular contemporary environmental issue (e.g., scientific data on the needs and habits of endangered species are used to develop plans to protect threatened species; life-cycle assess- ments are conducted to determine the total environmental impact of a consumer product) [PR, AI]
B2.4 use a research process to investigate how evidence, theories, and paradigms reflecting a range of perspectives have contributed to our scientific knowledge about the environment (e.g., with respect to debates about climate change; regarding the relationship between the cod moratorium and seal populations in Atlantic Canada), and communicate their findings [IP, PR, AI, C]
B2.5 use a research process to locate a media report on a contemporary environmental issue (e.g., climate change, melting of the polar ice cap, deforestation), summarize its arguments, and assess their validity from a scientific perspective [IP, PR, AI, C]
B. Understanding Basic Concepts
By the end of this course, students will:
B3.1 identify some major contemporary environ- mental challenges (e.g., global warming, acid precipitation), and explain their causes (e.g., deforestation, carbon and sulfur emissions) and effects (e.g., desertification, the creation of environmental refugees, the destruction of aquatic and terrestrial habitats)
B3.2 describe how scientists use a variety of pro- cesses (e.g., environmental impact assessments, environmental scans) to solve problems and answer questions related to the environment
B3.3 explain how new evidence affects scientific knowledge about the environment and leads to modifications of theory and/or shifts in para- digms (e.g., the impact of evidence of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on theories of global warming)
B3.4 explain how an environmental challenge has led to advances in science or technology (e.g., scrubbers on smokestacks to decrease sulfur dioxide emissions, hybrid cars)
B3.5 describe a variety of human activities that have led to environmental problems (e.g., burning fossil fuels for transportation or power generation; waste disposal) and/or contributed to their solu- tion (e.g., the development of renewable sources of energy; programs to reduce, reuse, and recycle)
SCIENTIFIC SOLUTIONS TO CONTEMPORARy ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES
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Environmental Science
SVN3M