Promoting student understanding of ecosystem processes is critical to biological education. Yet, teaching complex
life systems can be difficult because systems are dynamic and often behave in a non-linear manner. In this
paper, we discuss assessment results from a middle school classroom intervention in which a conceptual representation
framework is embedded in a suite of technology tools. We use both hand-drawn models and openended
written responses to evaluate student understanding. While we speculated that our intervention would
help students use ecosystem mechanisms to describe broader processes, we found instead that students tended to
express constructs in isolation (as opposed to a unified picture of ecosystem processes). In addition, students
provided greater elaboration of ideas mostly when specifically prompted. Specific prompts also tended to produce
more accurate representations of the ecosystem processes our curriculum covered. Our findings have
allowed us to refine our intervention to better translate these critical concepts, and how they are interrelated,
to young learners. As such, these findings have important implications for encouraging broader ecosystem
thinking in K-12 classrooms.

• Balancing broad ideas with context: an evaluation of student accuracy in describing ecosystem processes after a system-level intervention

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