Marine Science is a truly multidisciplinary discipline that incorporates elements of biology, physics, and chemistry—together, the core subjects in any high school science curriculum—with other multidisciplinary sciences like ecology and climate science. This is one of the reasons we encourage students to take our Marine Science course. It gives them a taste of the kind of more advanced, multidisciplinary work that they’ll do in college and the real world.
But there’s more to why a student should consider taking marine science while in middle school or high school.
Marine Science is Multidisciplinary
Marine science is an amalgamation of many different subjects, offering a broad and integrated understanding of the ocean and its inhabitants. In a marine science course students begin by learning textbook marine biology. They delve into the characteristics, behaviors, and habitats of various marine organisms, gaining a solid foundation in marine biology.
Student also tend to study hydrology, which is a sub branch of physics, and currents and plate tectonics, part of earth science. As students move between subjects areas, this inevitably leads them to interdisciplinary projects that incorporate a wide array of fields, providing a holistic and practical approach to marine science.
Project-Based Learning
Marine science leads inherently to project work. Typically, our marine science course is project-based, which allows students to shape the course through various projects, incorporating personal interests with textbook work.
As an example, two years ago we had two sisters who took our marine science course and engaged in various projects throughout their school year. The two students were different ages—one in 8th grade, the other a junior—but worked together in one of our pod courses. The older student decided to do a project on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), which are zones set up by governments and communities to, as the name suggests, protect marine zones from pollution, overfishing, and other threats. She wanted to understand how MPAs were created and whether they were effective. As part of her course she visited a few, interviewed marine scientists who were managing and studying the results, and put together a video documentary explaining marine protection around the world, the the intricacies of overfishing, and actions that individuals can take to support conservation.
Her sister, instead, wanted to focus on microplastics in the the ocean and beaches. For her project, she sifted sand on South African beaches to collect microplastics, which she then cataloged, making inferences about the quantity and type of pollution found around certain forms of human habitation.
Place-Based Learning
Marine science also lends itself naturally to place-based learning, which allows learners to tie their academic work to the real world, and is particularly suited to worldschoolers and digital nomad families. Combining project-based and place-based learning, allows for creativity and real world experience within the curriculum. Marine science is especially complimented by place-based learning, being a multidisciplinary course it needs contextualization in order for students to completely understand.
For example, the sisters mentioned earlier also used marine science to engage in place-based learning. While they were in Malaysia they volunteered with a local NGO, Seakeepers, at the University of Malaysia to conduct citizen science while sailing up the Malacca Strait. Using equipment provided by the University the girls took daily water samples. The water passed through multiple filters and then was transferred into a waiting bottle to be kept for the scientists. The students kept a thorough log of the samples, recording location, observations, and quality. At the end of the journey scientists from Seakeepers came aboard their boat to discuss the findings and collect the samples. A couple months later the girls received the results of pH and microplastic tests performed on those very same water samples.
(And if you’re wondering, the pH of our ocean is way too low (too acidic) and there are microplastics in every inch of the ocean (as well as our bodies)).
The girls engaged in a number of other hands-on experiences during their marine science course. For instance they performed fish counts, tagged whale sharks with Conservation International, and even visited a pearl farm and learned about the water filtering properties of oysters. These experiences not only deepened their understanding of the marine world but also added depth and nuance to their high school transcripts and eventually college applications.
Conclusion
Cicero offers a liberal arts education tailored to each student, designed to facilitate place-based and project-based learning. Each course is a vital component of this vision. Marine science, being an interdisciplinary course, provides even greater opportunity for this kind of learning.
