Many geoscience fieldworks are not aligned with the curriculum contents reflecting the need to develop more research related to the outdoor learning environment. The purpose of the study was to verify if a fieldwork organized in…
Phenomenography is an empirical approach to identifying the qualitatively dis- crete ways in which individuals experience and understand aspects of the world around them. Although established for several decades, the technique is…
Decades of science education research have provided us with a variety of tools to deal with the cognitive processes behind our students’ learning. However, we have placed much less attention on student affect, the feelings,…
Summer camps have proven to be effective tools to engage students in the geosciences. Findings from this study highlight perceptions and experiences of middle school students from predominantly African American school districts in…
To equip undergraduates with needed background, instruction in geospatial science was integrated across curricula and courses in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State…
Laboratories serve as an integral part of geoscience education at most colleges and universities. While anecdotal evidence supports the beneficial impact of laboratories on science class learning, little quantitative research backs…
This study examines the effects of an extended authentic research experience on students’ understanding of the nature of science (NOS) and self-efficacy toward science. The curriculum of an introductory…
This thesis explores how first year students in geology negotiate and make sense of the subject matter and develop a geological identity. The stories of 6 students who have entered the study program in Geology at the University of…
This article offers a set of design principles distilled from the Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) examination of over 100 programs with documented success in recruiting and retaining minority students in sciences,…
Eighteen middle and high school students with visual impairments participated in a weeklong field-based geology summer camp. This paper reports the curriculum, strategies, and what the students learned about Earth science by…
We explored students’ conceptions of plate tectonics using a combined qualitative and quantitative approach consisting of multiple-choice ConcepTest questions, ques- tionnaires, and interviews. When shown schematic images…
Native American nations in the United States have a unique legal status that is rooted in a complex relationship between the United States federal government, individual state and local governments and tribal authorities. Although…
Visual penetrative ability (VPA) is a basic skill for any geology undergraduate student and is also required in many introductory laboratory exercises designed for nonmajors. This is the ability to visualize the three-dimensional (…
Interest is a complex interplay between affective and cognitive components that drive motivation. Over decades of work in the educational psychology community, a theoretical framework has emerged that explains this complex…
To motivate student learning, the affective domain—emotion, attitude, and motivation—must be engaged. We propose a model that is specific to the geosciences with theoretical components of motivation and emotion from the field of…
Place-based education is locally situated, experiential, and transdisciplinary. It is informed not only by scientific knowledge of places and regions, but also by the humanistic meanings and affective attachments (senses of place)…
Unlike other informal sites, fossil parks provide visitors collecting opportunities that result in ownership of a small number of fossils. In 2003, we investigated the first three identified U.S. fossil parks at Hamburg, New York;…
Recognizing the relevance that fieldwork and field trips have in the teaching of geosciences and related learning processes, this study presents two geological fieldwork studies that were established with Portuguese secondary…
Learning in “the field” has long held a prominent role in the education of geoscientists. Despite the expense, time, and liability risks associated with fieldwork, field experiences are widely perceived as…
The National Research Council’s report, Discipline-Based Education Research: Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering (Singer, Nielsen, & Schweingruber, 2012), states…
The geosciences benefit from diverse student perspectives and backgrounds, but the field-based learning requirements pose barriers to students with disabilities. If carefully designed, fieldwork can be made…
This paper presents an instructional strategy for engaging students with the critical exploration of values in introductory geoscience courses. It is argued that the consideration of values (i.e., abstract expressions of desirable…
First year Geology students at the University of the Witwatersrand experience problems with both three-dimensional and “four-dimensional” (or time) visualization when attempting to interpret geological maps. These difficulties have been addressed by the introduction of hands-on modeling…
In response to calls for research into effective instruction in the Earth and space sciences, and to identify directions for future research, this systematic review of the literature explores research into…
The authors discus the role geographic perspectives can play in creating access for participation in STEM. A case study highlighted in the article presents practical initiatives such as job and career networking, as an avenue for nurturing diversity and encouraging instructors to present…
This study examined the factors that contribute to students’ success in conducting geological field work. Undergraduate students (n = 49; 51% female; mean age = 22 y) who were enrolled in the 5-wk State University of New York at…
Problem-Based Learning, despite recent controversies about its effectiveness, is used extensively as a teaching method throughout higher education. In meteorology, there has been little attempt to incorporate Problem-Based Learning…
Concept inventories are relatively new types of diagnostic instruments intended to measure student learning. Concept inventories exist for astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, fluid mechanics, geology, and physics. None is…
This article studies the effect of an Earth systems Science for All program intervention. This intervention was aimed at cultivating a sense of success and developing cognitive skills among students in classes with a dominant…
Students who have a strong urban place-identity may perceive the natural world differently from many geoscience instructors. These urban thinkers have less experience in the natural world and are more comfortable in built…
The nature of field trips in geoscience lends them to the application of social learning theories for three key reasons. First, they provide opportunity for meaningful practical experience and promote effective learning afforded by…
Visual representations of scientific data make these data accessible and enable students to examine the evidence used to build scientific arguments and test theo- ries, even when the underlying data set is large or complicated. It…
Engaging students in problem-solving concerning environmental issues in near-surface complex Earth systems involves developing student conceptualization of the Earth as a system and applying that scientific knowledge to the…
During the summer of 2012, the Louisiana State University (LSU) field camp program was affected by close proximity to the large Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs, CO, as well as by a fire incident on the field camp property. A…
This study quantifies improvements in introductory students' concepts in geoscience after completion of a nine week, entirely field-based geology course. Sixty-three student participants in three consecutive introductory field…
An ethnographic study was conducted on an undergraduate field course to observe and document lived experiences of students. This paper evaluates one of several emergent themes: that of technology dependence, and how it informs…
Students with physical disabilities encounter challenges in any scientific discipline, yet the geosciences have extremely low participation levels for persons with dis- abilities. Because of the emphasis placed on field research at…
The focus of this research was to investigate how students learn to do fieldwork through observation. This study addressed the following questions: (1) Can mobile eye-tracking devices provide a robust source of data to investigate…
The abundance of freely available, scientific big data sets can facilitate discovery-based authentic science projects saving time, money, and effort. This is especially true of remotely sensed data, as there is global coverage of Earth's surface spanning several decades that can be used for a…
This study is a research project focused on the implementation of problem-based learning in an honors, paleontology-oriented, Earth Science course. The course, the Age of Dinosaurs, is taught at the University of Texas at Dallas to…
Interviews, paper-and-pencil (PNP) exercises, and class observations were the qualitative research methods used to investigate student alternate conceptions and their cognitive models of geoscience concepts. Three categories of…
A key challenge in university geoscience teaching is to give students the skills to cope with uncertainty. Professional geoscientists can rarely be certain of the ‘right answer’ to problems posed by most geological datasets, and reasoning through this uncertainty, being intelligently flexible in…
The ways in which people view the world, and by extension the ways in which they learn, are shaped by cultural context. As educators striving to build scientific literacy among our students, it is critical to bridge the gaps among…