Research BRINGING ONLearning GEOSCIENCES · cognitive scientists. The time is ripe for such a partnership because: • Geoscience educators are receptive to research partnerships

BRINGING RESEARCH ON LEARNING TO THE GEOSCIENCES — 1

LearningBRINGING

Research

Report from a Workshop Sponsoredby the National Science Foundation

and the Johnson Foundation

Cathy Manduca, David Mogk, and Neil Stillings

TO THEGEOSCIENCES

ON

2 — BRINGING RESEARCH ON LEARNING TO THE GEOSCIENCES


LearningBRINGING

ON

TO THEGEOSCIENCES

Research

Report from a Workshop Sponsoredby the National Science Foundation

and the Johnson Foundation

Cathy Manduca, David Mogk, and Neil Stillings


Research [on learning in the geosciences] and the tools developed for its implementation will

allow students and faculty to understand what they are trying to learn and how it can be

accomplished and to monitor the progress of learning. Toward this goal, it is recommended

that a discipline-specific Center for Research on Learning in the Geosciences be established.

Credit, Background Image: Nancy J. Ashmore


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (REC 021365)

One of the most exciting and influential changes un-derway in science education today is the increasingapplication of research on learning to education. Thisreport summarizes discussions of how this researchcould be used to improve learning in the geosciencesthat were held in July 2002 at the Johnson Foundation’sWingspread Conference Center. Twenty geoscienceeducators, cognitive scientists, and scholars engaged ineducational research in other scientific disciplines metfor three days to develop an understanding of the cur-rent state of research on learning in the geosciences, toidentify research questions of high interest to bothgeoscience faculty and learning scientists, and to de-velop a plan for fostering improved application of re-search on learning in geoscience instruction.

Three overarching themes emerged from the discussion:

• Significant improvement in undergraduate geo-science instruction could be realized through aclear articulation of learning goals describingwhat we want students to know and to be ableto do and the use of these goals to design andimplement new instructional practices and ma-terials that are informed by learning science.

• The geosciences provide unique challenges tolearning that can be approached throughcognitively oriented research. This researchshould provide a foundation for instructionaldesign of geoscience courses and curricula, aswell as exciting new opportunities for funda-mental research into how people think andlearn.

• To effect change in undergraduate geoscienceinstruction, discovery of what will improveeducation in the geosciences must be coupledwith mechanisms to bring those findings intowidespread practice.

Making progress in these areas requires a partner-ship between geoscientists, education experts, andcognitive scientists. The time is ripe for such apartnership because:

• Geoscience educators are receptive to researchpartnerships with the learning sciences. Theirinterest stems, in part, from their awareness thatthere has been a lack of research on geosciencelearning that would correspond to that done inchemistry, physics, and other sciences and, inpart, from the growing reconceptualization inthe geosciences in response to new scientific ap-proaches and interdisciplinary connections.

• From the standpoint of cognitive and learningscientists, the geosciences are an exceptionallyrich cognitive domain that offers both interest-ing parallels to and differences from other sci-entific fields. In addition, geoscience educationreaches a very large and diverse student popula-tion with a curriculum that offers accessible op-portunities for student inquiry that is enlivenedby numerous policy issues.


Reflecting on the important opportunities thatresearch on learning in the geosciences provides forimproving geoscience and science education andfurthering our understanding of how people thinkand learn, workshop participants recommendactivities in three areas:

Research — New research that addresses areas of highinterest to both geoscientists and learning scientistswill have major benefits in both fields. A first-ordergoal for this research is understanding the nature ofgeoscience expertise:

• What characterizes the thinking of an expertgeoscientist?

• What important geoscience concepts (e.g., geo-logic time, plate tectonics, global circulation)and skills are essential to practicing and apply-ing geoscience?

• How do geoscientists understand the Earth sys-tem in the context of complex interactions in aheterogeneous, dynamic, uncertain, and oftenchaotic world (Ireton et al., 1997; NRC, 2001)?

Research results on the nature of geoscience expertisecan then be translated into effective instructionalpractice. Towards this end:

• Learning goals and outcomes (in all contexts)should be informed by what we’ve learnedabout expertise in the geosciences.

• The stages of development of geosciencecognition should be investigated and related tomore general issues in cognitive and intellectualdevelopment. Three areas were of particularinterest to participating geoscientists andlearning scientists alike: geologic time, complexsystems, and visualizing the Earth.

• Research should be directed towards an under-standing of how learning environments shouldbe developed to effectively support students’achievement of geoscience expertise. Field expe-riences and experiences that engage studentswith geoscience datasets provide special, power-ful opportunities for learning in the geosciencesand should be a central part of these efforts.

Assessment tools are a critical aspect of this research todemonstrate when we are successful and the causes ofthis success. Excellent learning environments evolveover time, and assessment is essential to guide andmeasure evolutionary advances.

Dissemination — Currently, geoscientists are notfully aware of the advances in learning science that arerelevant to their teaching. Materials need to be createdand disseminated that present these results in a con-text that is accessible to geoscience faculty and makes acompelling case for adoption.


PARTICIPANTS

Pam Burnley | Georgia State UniversityJudy Dori | Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDaniel Edelson | Northwestern UniversityJanice Gobert | The Concord ConsortiumMichelle Hall-Wallace | University of ArizonaJack Hehn | American Institute of PhysicsLoretta Jones | University of Northern ColoradoKim Kastens | Lamont-Dougherty Earth

Observatory of Columbia UniversityHelen King | The University of Reading, EnglandJulie Libarkin | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for

AstrophysicsMarcia Linn | University of California, Berkeley

Graduate School of EducationCathy Manduca | Carleton CollegeChet Melcher | Racine Unified School DistrictJoel Michael | Rush Medical CollegeDave Mogk | Montana State UniversityMichael Piburn | Arizona State UniversityEdward (Joe) Redish | University of MarylandSteve Reynolds | Arizona State UniversityJill Singer | National Science FoundationWilliam Slattery | Wright State UniversityNeil Stillings | Hampshire CollegeDavid Uttal | Northwestern UniversityKen Whang | National Science FoundationRichard F. Yuretich | University of Massachusetts

Professional development — Capacity needs to bedeveloped for research on learning in the geosciences.Professional development opportunities that bring to-gether geoscientists, educators, and learning scientistsare a fundamental aspect of this capacity building, asare opportunities for faculty to develop their capacityto observe student learning and to design and evaluatetheir teaching practices.

In sum, we propose a coordinated effort among geo-science educators and learning scientists that works ina holistic fashion to articulate what is meant by geo-science expertise, the cognitive pathways to achievingthis expertise, and the critical aspects of effectivelearning environments. This research and the toolsdeveloped for its implementation will allow studentsand faculty to understand what they are trying tolearn and how it can most effectively be accomplishedand to monitor the progress of learning. Toward thisgoal, it is recommended that a discipline-specific Cen-ter for Research on Learning in the Geosciences beestablished.


INTRODUCTION: THE WORKSHOP

ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING AND INFLU-ENTIAL CHANGES UNDERWAY IN SCIENCEEDUCATION TODAY is the increasing applicationof research on learning to instruction. Not only is itclear from research that people learn by graduallybuilding, modifying, and adapting their understand-ing on the basis of their experiences, but this funda-mental aspect of learning is increasingly being incor-porated into the design of learning activities (NRC,1999). Similarly, studies of experts and expertise areinforming the design of curricula, and research tech-niques are increasingly being applied to the evaluationof learning materials and instructional methods.

The geosciences are an important part of science edu-cation, focusing on the Earth system and its impactson humans and on the ways in which humanity influ-ences or changes the Earth in turn. To foster improvedinstruction and learning, a new community of schol-ars is needed to undertake research efforts that specifi-cally address geoscience learning and expertise as wellas the challenges of teaching in this field. Such disci-plinary communities have played a critical role in thesuccessful application of the principles of learning toscience classrooms in other fields (e.g., chemistry,physics, mathematics).

This report presents the results of discussions held inSummer 2002 among 20 geoscience educators, cogni-tive scientists, and scholars engaging in educationalresearch in other scientific disciplines. A three-dayworkshop was held July 8-10, 2002, at the JohnsonFoundation’s Wingspread Conference Center inRacine, Wisconsin. Prior to the workshop, partici-pants posted essays on learning in the geosciences andparticipated in web-based discussions that helped torefine the agenda. The essays, a list of relevant re-sources, and other related information are available atthe workshop website: http://serc.carleton.edu/research_on_learning/workshop02/. Our goals were todevelop an understanding of the current state of re-search on learning in the geosciences, to identify re-search questions of high interest to both geosciencefaculty and learning scientists, and to develop a planfor fostering improved application of research onlearning in geoscience instruction.

From the discussion, three major themes emerged:

• There is both a need and an opportunity forsignificant change in undergraduate geoscienceinstruction. This can be realized through a cleararticulation of what we want students to be ableto do and the design and implementation ofnew instructional practices that are informed bylearning science. Research into what it means tobe a geoscience expert and how learning in geo-science is accomplished will illuminate thesegoals as well as the pathways to achieving them.


• Several aspects of geoscience provide uniquechallenges to learning that can be approachedthrough cognitively oriented research. Thestudy of these learning situations will provide afoundation for instructional design as well asopportunities for fundamental research intohow people think and learn. Example areas in-clude geologic time, spatial relationships, theEarth as a dynamic and evolving system, the useof visualization by geoscience experts and stu-dents, and making observations of natural,open, and complex systems to support reason-ing about the connections between Earth andhumanity.

• Discovery of what will improve education inthe geosciences must be coupled withmechanisms to bring those findings intowidespread practice. This will require basicresearch on cognition, research on effectiveeducational practice, implementation projects,faculty professional development, and nationaldissemination.

Workshop participants affirmed that the geosciencespresent a favorable environment for systematic re-search in the learning sciences.

• Geoscience educators are receptive to researchpartnerships with the learning sciences. Theirinterest stems, in part, from their awareness thatthere has been a lack of research on geosciencelearning that would correspond to that done inchemistry, physics, and other sciences and, inpart, from the growing reconceptualization in

the geosciences in response to new scientific ap-proaches and interdisciplinary connections.

• From the standpoint of cognitive and learningscientists, the geosciences are an exceptionallyrich cognitive domain that offers both interest-ing parallels to and differences from other sci-entific fields. In addition, geoscience educationreaches a very large and diverse student popula-tion with a curriculum that offers accessible op-portunities for student inquiry that is enlivenedby numerous policy issues.

The workshop laid foundations for collaborations andpartnerships between geoscientists and learning scien-tists, articulated below in four sections, which present

• Our common understanding of the goals forgeoscience education;

• A conception of expertise and learning in thegeosciences that will guide an anticipatedprogram of research on cognition in geoscienceas well as on the related basic issues in humancognition;

• A framework for the research and developmentrequired for creating effective learningenvironments in the geosciences; and

• Recommendations for action, including plansfor national dissemination, professionaldevelopment across the discipline, and researchthat will support improvements in geoscienceeducation and make contributions to cognitivescience.


“Thinking like a geoscientist,” in short, grows out of exposure to a continuum of scaffolded

learning opportunities that start with the most basic of information and simplest of tasks

and build gradually to a composite, integrated understanding of the Earth system.

Credit, Background Image: Captain Albert E. Theberge, NOAA Corps (ret.)


GOALS FOR GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION

• The ability to think simultaneously abouttemporal and spatial relations across manyorders of magnitude;

• Creation and use of complex, multi-step models;

• Interpretation of incomplete data to deriverational conclusions;

• Integration of information across many sub-disciplines of the geosciences and of relatedphysical, life, and mathematical sciences; and

• The use of visualization to enhance understand-ing of complex systems.

“Thinking like a geoscientist,” in short, grows out ofexposure to a continuum of scaffolded learning oppor-tunities that start with the most basic of informationand simplest of tasks and build gradually to a compos-ite, integrated understanding of the Earth system.

Having a firm grasp of what it means to “think like ageoscientist” is crucial to having productive discus-sions of both geoscience education and research ongeoscience learning. Clearly articulated goals for geo-science learning provide instructors with guidance indeveloping courses and learning experiences. Theyclarify for students the aims of instruction in a courseor major. They provide faculty with a framework inwhich to establish appropriate standards for studentperformance and outcomes. And — not least impor-tant in this context — they guide the development ofresearch into what and how students are learning.

Goals for learning must be focused on students: whatthey should know, what they should be able to do,and how they can be encouraged to appreciate the

AN OVERARCHING GOAL FOR GEOSCIENCEEDUCATION IS TO HELP EVERY STUDENT TO“THINK LIKE A GEOSCIENTIST.” This includesthe ability to understand the nature and processes ofscience and the roles of evidence and theory. A basicunderstanding of the Earth system, its composition,structure, and processes provides the knowledge base,methodologies, and global contexts that make scienceaccessible, relevant, and meaningful for all students(Ireton et al., 1997). Our personal and communalhealth, security, and economic well-being are directlyrelated to the connections between humanity and theEarth system, particularly in areas such as natural haz-ards, resource utilization, and environmental awareness.

For those who teach non-majors, helping them to“think like a geoscientist” translates into preparingthem to make informed decisions as stewards of theEarth in their roles as voters, consumers, and contrib-uting members of society.

For those who teach geoscience majors, and those whorely on geoscience expertise (e.g., journalists, policymakers), learning goals extend to a more sophisticatedunderstanding of the Earth and mastery of related skills:

• The ability to observe nature and infer events inthe past or processes beyond human perception;

• Understanding time, including rates, scales, andthe relationship between the current state andthe time-integrated history;

• Understanding geospatial relations and theirrepresentations;


value of science in their lives and in society. The geo-sciences can play at least four important roles in stu-dents’ learning experiences:

• They can help students develop their under-standing of the general nature of science;

• They can create an understanding of the geo-sciences in particular;

• They can provide an opportunity to integrateskills and learning from other sciences andmathematics in context; and

• They can provide an opportunity to apply sci-entific understanding to societal or personal de-cision-making.

In all of these roles, we identify goals for students thatare related to

• Content — mastery of fundamental conceptsand information that allows us to understandand function in the world around us;

• Skills — development of lifelong skills (e.g., rea-soning, communication, quantification, graphi-cal, collaborative) and technical skills (e.g., useof instruments);

• Processes — the ability to apply content andskills to a novel situation, to directly experiencethe methods and processes of inquiry and dis-covery, to formulate effective approaches toproblem-solving, and to conceptualize, imple-ment, and successfully complete a plan of actionfor an extended project; and

• Attitudes — understanding and valuing theprocesses and products of science and what itmeans to learn science and geoscience.

These goals can be summarized as the desire to helpstudents develop in ways that lead toward becoming ageoscience “expert”— someone with the ability tothink like a geoscientist and to apply geoscienceknowledge to problems.

Expert geoscientists have many skills that are typical ofscientists more generally (e.g., reasoning from evi-dence). However, in this report we focus specificallyon goals, expertise, and learning that are either uniqueto the geosciences or particularly important in thisfield. Geoscience expertise includes both an under-standing of important geoscience concepts (e.g., geo-logic time, plate tectonics, global circulation) and theskills that are essential to practicing and applying geo-science. Of increasing importance is the emphasis geo-science experts place on understanding the Earth sys-tem in the context of complex interactions in a het-erogeneous, dynamic, uncertain, and often chaoticworld (Ireton et al., 1997; NRC, 2001). How can webest help students learn to interpret data and drawconclusions about the Earth and Earth processes inways that reflect the expertise and wisdom of the dis-cipline?

The level or type of expertise we aim to develop willvary with setting and student. However, a strong graspof what it means to have expertise in the geosciencescan serve as a guide to the development of appropriatelearning goals in all contexts. The workshop partici-pants noted that the geosciences afford a number ofspecial opportunities to broaden students’ general sci-entific abilities. The geosciences are particularly well-suited to developing student understanding of the rel-evance of science and its application in daily life. Inaddition, since concepts from physics, chemistry, andbiology play important roles in the geosciences, theycan help students to transfer learning from other disci-plines into a new context and to understand the link-ages between disciplines and the value of bringing dif-ferent tools and perspectives to complex scientificproblems.


EXPERTISE AND LEARNING IN THE GEOSCIENCES

Geoscience ExpertiseAt present, geoscience expertise is poorly understood.Determining its nature provides a major research op-portunity for the future. Although research ongeoscientific expertise will undoubtedly lead to con-siderable elaboration and revision of these remarks,discussions at the workshop established an initial con-ception of key cognitive dimensions of geoscientificknowledge:

• Observation. The pivotal role of evidential sup-port in the creation, modification, and accep-tance of explanations is a hallmark of science.Because evidence in the geosciences is largelyobservational and often ambiguous or incom-plete, consequent causal models are often con-tingent and complex. Expert inference in thegeosciences often involves gathering and weigh-ing multiple, uncertain sources of data in thequest for convergent support. A model of scien-tific method and reasoning that emphasizes thesystematic manipulation of variables and repli-cable laboratory control does not fit the researchmethods of this field well. We have much tolearn about inferential reasoning with observa-tional data, which is often uncertain, messy tosome degree, and confounded or complicatedby factors that cannot be experimentally elimi-nated. Although reductionism continues to havesome value in geologic investigations, observa-tions of complex natural systems increasinglyrequire integrative or synthetic approaches toachieve more holistic understanding.

THE WORKSHOP, AS WELL AS PRE-MEETINGACTIVITIES, DEMONSTRATED THE IMMEDI-ATE FERTILITY AND POTENTIAL FOR COL-LABORATION AMONG GEOSCIENTISTS,LEARNING SCIENTISTS, AND EDUCATIONALRESEARCHERS from various perspectives who arewilling to begin from first principles to build on eachother’s knowledge. Central to the group’s discussionwas a rich and systematic discussion of fundamentalissues for the study of learning in the geosciences. Themain results of the discussion are described in this sec-tion and provide the grounding for the anticipatedresearch and development program which is addressedin later sections.

The discussion of fundamental issues begins with theconsideration of the nature of expertise in the geo-sciences. Hypotheses about the nature of geoscience asa cognitive activity are developed in some detail. Be-cause this report is oriented toward learning and in-struction, these hypotheses are developed in psycho-logical terms, but it should be pointed out that theyentail assumptions about the logic of explanation andevidence in the geosciences. The workshop partici-pants’ provisional sketch of geoscience expertiseframes the discussion, which follows, of a set of ideasabout geoscience learning which emerged from thegroup’s collective experience in the learning sciences,in research on learning in other disciplines (physics,chemistry, and biology), and in the study and practiceof geoscience instruction.


• Confirmation. A defining characteristic of ex-pertise is the fluency of perception and actionthat arises from practice. This fluency often in-volves more than the tuning of peripheral sen-sory-motor mechanisms. To a surprising extent,arbitrarily abstract conceptual categories and themeanings associated with them can be inte-grated with perception. Thus, the fluent reader“sees” meaning, not black-and-white patterns,on the page. The physicist “sees” a situation interms of a principle such as conservation of en-ergy (Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, 1981).

These intuitions of the expert practitioners of adiscipline reflect its core concepts and most fun-damental meanings. An analysis of core con-cepts, of what it means to see the world as ageoscientist, is central to research on learningand teaching in the geosciences. One strikingperceptual-cognitive skill discussed at the work-shop is the ability of an expert to “read” thegeological history of a field site in its physicalfeatures. This ability unites the visual, temporal,and conceptual aspects of the discipline in aheightened feel for physical place, augmenting adeeply rooted natural human tendency.

• Explanation. Explanation is an overarching goalof science; the theories and models of a fieldpossess a special integrative role among its stockof concepts. Any analysis of core concepts in thegeosciences, therefore, would necessarily featuremajor theories and models. A good deal of thediscussion prior to and during the workshopabstracted away from the details of specificgeoscientific theories. Rather, focus was directedon the complexity of explanatory models in thegeosciences and on the hypothesis that a perva-sive mode of explanation in the field involvesmodels of complex systems with multiple inter-acting causal factors.

The fact that geoscience is about a unique, ex-ceedingly complex natural phenomenon, theEarth, affects the ability of the scientist to sim-plify, idealize, and set boundary conditions in

constructing models. Geoscience appears to dif-fer from physics and chemistry in this regardand, as a consequence, in its dependence oncomplex models. The complexity of explanationin geoscience is also affected by the fact that it isa higher-level science that draws on data andmethodologies from physics, chemistry, and bi-ology. (In its concern with complex phenomenaand interaction, geoscience may resemble otherhigher-level sciences such as physiology or ecol-ogy. Workshop participants were not as familiarwith the distinctive patterns of causal reasoningand model construction in such fields.)

• Geological time. Geoscience is a historical disci-pline in the sense that change in the Earth sys-tem over time is an intrinsic feature of many ofits concepts. To a significant extent, to knowgeoscience is to understand a complex networkof temporal relationships, and to think as a geo-scientist is to think in terms of time. Workingwith this web of time-referenced concepts,which span many orders of temporal magnitude,requires cognitive, graphical, and quantitativerepresentations of time that go well beyondthose employed in everyday life.

• Visualization. The geosciences are rich in multi-dimensional visual representations. With somevariation across subfields, experts clearly possessan impressive array of visualization skills andvisually referenced concepts. These include theability to interpret and to construct many differ-ent kinds of maps and the ability to relate arange of 3-D views of structure or patterns inthe Earth, ocean, or atmosphere to processesthat occur dynamically over time in three di-mensions. It is of great interest that even for ex-perts the forms and cognitive demands of theserepresentations are changing rapidly with ad-vances in digital imaging technologies.

What is most interesting about this initial sketch ofcognition in the geosciences is the degree to which itis distinct from other sciences. As a result, geoscience


One striking perceptual-cognitive skill discussed at the workshop is the ability of an expert to

“read” the geological history of a field site in its physical features. This ability unites the

visual, temporal, and conceptual aspects of the discipline in a heightened feel for physical

place, augmenting a deeply rooted natural human tendency.

Credit, Background Image: NWS / National Centers for Environmental Prediction / Climate Prediction Center


Understanding the geosciences requires students to internalize the meaning of long periods of

time and the relationships among events that occur in seconds or minutes to processes that

work on timescales of millions or billions of years.

Credit, Background Image: NWS / National Centers for Environmental Prediction / Climate Prediction Center


offers new opportunities for research in cognitive sci-ence in addition to studies of the detailed expertiseand learning needed to master specific key concepts inthe field. It will also be necessary, of course, to studywhat it means to master and be able to reason with thecentral concepts of the discipline, such as the theoryof plate tectonics, just as it has been important in re-search on physics learning to understand reasoningwith Newton’s laws (Hestenes, Wells, & Swackhamer1992; Hake, 1998).

Geoscience LearningBuilding on our initial sketch of geoscience expertise,we can ask how each aspect of geoscientific cognitionis learned and how the learning process is related tomore general issues in cognitive and intellectual devel-opment. Three areas were of particular interest to par-ticipating geoscientists and learning scientists alike:geologic time, complex systems, and visualizing theEarth.

Geologic TimeLearning about geologic time was singled out as a spe-cific area of challenge by the geoscience educators atthe workshop. Research on how a concept of geologictime develops out of everyday conceptions of time wasof considerable interest to the cognitive scientists inthe group.

Some researchers in cognitive science have suggestedthat the visual metaphor of the linear time line is abiologically natural representation for temporal rea-soning (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). The time line,however, is an inadequate representation for geologicaltime. Understanding the geosciences requires studentsto internalize the meaning of long periods of time andthe relationships among events that occur in secondsor minutes to processes that work on timescales of mil-lions or billions of years. Such understanding requiresa logarithmic representation and an ability to “zoom”mentally to different levels of temporal detail associ-ated with different degrees of precision and accuracy.Quantitative representations of time involving powersof ten or rates of change are also challenging for manystudents. Finally, learners must coordinate the organi-zation of geoscience concepts in terms of temporal

representations with 2-D and 3-D spatial representa-tions and with conceptions of underlying causal pro-cesses.

For example, mountain ranges are built over thecourse of millions of years by the cumulative effect offaulting and folding. However, the movement onfaults occurs in discrete faulting events that takeminutes or seconds. In addition, the understanding oftime is often represented in the geologic record byspatial variation in deposits. The simplest example ofthis is a layered stratigraphy with oldest rocks at thebottom. More complex relationships are more typical,however. A river, for example, may simultaneouslydeposit gravel on its bed and silt on its banks. As theriver migrates through space over time, layers of graveland silt can be produced that contain deposits of differentages within a single layer. Thus, the student must workwith complex spatial relationships and their correlationsto changing processes acting through time.

This complex coordination of temporal and spatialevidence and causal process is critical, and it may beparticularly difficult because understanding cannot bemediated by more direct access to events. Many geo-logic processes were never directly observed by any-one, and the conceptual leap from analogous processesthat are observable to an understanding of the relevantgeologic concept can be considerable. Consider, forexample, what it takes to make the jump from observ-ing convection of cream in a coffee cup (taking placeon timescales of centimeters per second) to under-standing convection operating in the Earth’s interior(occurring with rates of millimeters per year). Since somuch of our understanding of geologic time is basedon concepts that we cannot experience directly, learn-ing about geologic time may require different types ofthinking than are applied in much of experimental-inquiry–based science.

Complex SystemsLearning about the Earth system is difficult. TheEarth is a large, complex, non-linear system com-prised of many sub-systems interacting through di-verse chemical, physical, and biological processes overa range of spatial and temporal scales. These processes


leave only a partial record of their history. Thus, criti-cal challenges for geoscience students are developing ageneral understanding of how complex systems work,a specific understanding of the relationship of generalconcepts to specific aspects of the Earth, and strategiesfor observing and understanding complex natural sys-tems through time.

Workshop participants identified several ways thatcomplexity challenges students at a more basic level:

• Language about the Earth system is confusingor inadequate and is somewhat confounded bythe creation of ad hoc names for objects andprocesses that are often rooted in historical orregional contexts, commingling of descriptiveand genetic (or interpretive) terms, and generallack of consensus among diverse interests (e.g.,in the recognition of major sub-systems.)

• Accessible representations of the system and itscomponents are difficult to construct due to thecomplexity needed for accurate representationand due to incomplete understanding by thescientific community. Representations that areaccessible to students are often unrealistic intheir portrayals (and may be misleading or in-correct in their attempt to simplify), yet multidi-mensional representations of Earth phenomenadefy attempts to succinctly convey informationand their relations.

• A sequential model for learning, wherein oneconcept provides a starting point for the next, isnot applicable. In the geosciences it is oftennecessary to understand two equally complexideas at the same time. (For example, an under-standing of plate tectonics requires an under-standing of volcanic processes — and an under-standing of volcanic processes requires an un-derstanding of plate tectonics.) This is particu-larly evident in cyclical phenomena in the Earthsystem which have no clearly defined startingpoint and in which all parts of the cycle are in-tegrally related to all other parts via dynamicprocesses and feedback mechanisms.

• There are often multiple possible causes for thesame type of observable event. (For example, achange in average atmospheric temperature mayreflect changes in solar radiation budget,changes in atmospheric composition, orchanges in the Earth’s albedo.)

• A satisfactory understanding, even at earlier lev-els of instruction, requires integration of manyfacets of Earth science and of fundamental sci-entific principles.

Expert geoscientists are facile at creating explanationsbased on complex conceptual models. They test theseexplanations with information derived from multiple,uncertain observational data sources. Their learning ofnew geoscientific concepts and skills is facilitated by amature and active understanding of these strategies,but it is a safe assumption that most students entercollege without this understanding. Even the best in-quiry-oriented science instruction in their previouseducation probably emphasized controlled experimen-tation and relatively straightforward causal models.These students will have naïve or incomplete views ofhow geoscientific knowledge is structured and justi-fied; this will affect their understanding of disciplinaryparticulars, which depend on the epistemological con-text. They face a bootstrapping process in which thechallenge of learning more advanced science shouldspur their epistemological development, which in turnshould facilitate their mastery of content. A crucialresearch objective, therefore, is coming to understandlearning sequences not only in terms of the mastery ofparticular concepts or skills but also in terms ofprogress towards a more sophisticated and active graspof the modes of explanation and empirical justifica-tion that are typical of the geosciences.


Visualizing the EarthResearch on visualization is a prominent strand ofcontemporary cognitive and learning science. Topicsrange from the basic neural capacity for visual imagi-nation to students’ mental processes while learningfrom 3-D molecular models in chemistry. The intrinsi-cally spatial nature of many of their concepts and theextensive use of multi-dimensional visual representa-tions make the geosciences an excellent site for re-search into spatial concept learning, visual imagery,and visualization. Maps of all kinds are intrinsic togeoscience investigations on many scales: topographic,geologic, and hydrologic maps derived from field ob-servations; outcrop-scale maps that demonstratemesoscopic relations; microscopic petrographic mapsthat identify minerals and their textures in thin sec-tion; X-ray elemental maps derived from electronbeam analysis that demonstrate compositional differ-ences in minerals on a micron scale. This extensive useof complex maps and of representations of 3-D trans-formations offers the visual cognition researcher a richset of materials grounded in actual practice.

Geoscience investigations also commonly use multi-component datasets or integration of diverse datasetsto describe and interpret the Earth (e.g., Manduca andMogk, 2002a and 2002b). Diverse representations ofthese datasets are often used to demonstrate relation-ships which have specific meaning for “experts” butwhich are often impenetrable to “novices” (e.g., phaserelations in the “basalt tetrahedron,” mineralogicaland structural stereonet projections, hydro-geochemi-cal “Piper diagrams,” seismic first motion “beach ball”diagrams).

New research is likely to yield insights both into visualcognition and into significant cognitive challenges forgeoscience students at all levels, since teaching stu-dents to observe, to learn from and create visual repre-sentations, and to work with visual data are centralaspects of geoscience education. The large and diverseundergraduate populations at introductory and moreadvanced levels offer opportunities for developmentalstudies and investigations of gender differences in spa-tial cognition. The increasing incorporation of com-puter-based visualization into professional practiceand teaching also make the field a natural context forstudies of the impact of digital technologies on visuallearning.


CREATING EFFECTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

WE ALL LIVE IN THE WORLD, DEPEND ON ITSRESOURCES, AND ARE IMPACTED BY ITS PRO-CESSES ON A DAILY BASIS. Yet, it is often a chal-lenge to get students to observe the world aroundthem and make these connections to their personallives. In the previous section, we sketched a concep-tion of what we want students to learn and of the cog-nitive challenges that often face them as they developthis understanding. This conception, particularly whenfleshed out by further research, can provide a ground-ing for creating effective learning environments.

Workshop discussions highlighted the importance ofcreating learning environments that

• Foster students’ ability to use and understandvisualizations and other representations of data,understand complex causal models, gain an ap-preciation of geologic time, and apply geologicknowledge and approaches to public policy anddecision-making;

• Motivate learning (Edelson, 2001);

• Recognize different learning styles at differentlife stages of an individual and for differentpeople;

• Understand opportunities and challenges forlearning in different physical spaces, includingthe field, lab (both for studying physical objectsand computer-based objects), and classroom set-tings;

• Foster a transition from student initial thinkingto thinking that is more like that of expert geo-scientists;

• Implement an integrated framework for instruc-tion across academic levels; and

• Improve attitudes toward science and develop anunderstanding of the role of science in society.

Students bring a wide variety of ideas about science,geoscience, and society to their learning. A fundamen-tal lesson from research on learning is that our learn-ing environments must help students themselvestransform their existing understanding of a subjectinto one that reflects new knowledge (NRC, 1999).This requires that learning environments and activitiestake into account our students’ current knowledge,misconceptions, and attitudes and provide opportuni-ties and motivation for them to change and grow fromthis starting point.

Learning can be viewed as a process that begins by es-tablishing what students know and what they want orneed to know and proceeds by determining how tomove them from where they are to where they want tobe. (At this point, we know very little about the initialconceptions that students bring to the study of thegeosciences at various levels of instruction. The re-search initiative we propose later in our recommenda-tions for action must address this gap.) To help thisprocess, students should have the opportunity to movebeyond their personal experiences and into a variety ofphysically distinct learning spaces. In so doing, theycan take advantage of, and integrate across, learningmodalities that are optimized by making observationsin the field, performing experiments in a lab, accessingcomputer-based technologies, and participating in avariety of classroom activities.


Much recent research on college and pre-college in-struction supports the conclusion that traditional en-vironments based on textbooks, lectures, andmemory-based assessments do not optimally supportthe development of conceptual understanding, scien-tific inquiry skills, more sophisticated epistemologies,and an increased interest in science (NRC, 1999; Linn& Hsi, 2000; Schmidt, et al., 1997; Chi, et al., 1994;Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989; Brown, 1997;Koedinger, et al., 1997). There is now a large arsenalof learning activities that are hypothesized to fosterdesirable learning outcomes, and in some disciplinesthere is considerable evidence to support the hypoth-eses (Redish, 1999; Hake,1998). The methods rangefrom concept tests with small group discussion, peer-led team learning workshops, and model-based rea-soning problems to extended inquiry projects, case-based learning, and extended critical writing assign-ments with structured peer or instructor feedback.

Geoscience educators at the workshop reported thatmany faculty feel that some of the largest barriers tolearning geoscience are student attitudes and expecta-tions. They commented on the difficulty of gettingstudents to move beyond rote learning and multiple-choice tests to engage in the learning experience.Workshop participants are anxious to see learning en-vironments develop that challenge students to changetheir attitude toward science and their expectations forgeoscience learning, as well as enhancing their think-ing skills, content understanding, and confidence intheir ability to apply geoscience and science knowl-edge in their lives. The geosciences appear to be par-ticularly well suited to strategies that use a socialcontext to create such a learning environment, in-cluding the use of local issues or concerns, societalcontroversies, or historical events to motivate andorganize learning.

Working with GeoscienceObservations and DataThe tradition of including field experiences in under-graduate instruction is one of the strongest elementsof current geoscience education, and it offers a plat-form and organizing strand for the design and refine-

ment of learning activities and environments. Geo-logical field experiences offer a number of advantagesfor inquiry-oriented science instruction:

• A field site typically offers a wealth of visibleevidence;

• Particular field sites have specific histories thatcan pose unique scientific problems for stu-dents;

• The visible evidence at a site can be progres-sively deepened using other accessible measure-ment and collection techniques;

• Evidence from the site can be enriched withavailable GIS (geographic information system)information from the same geographical area orfrom similar sites elsewhere; and

• Explanatory hypotheses and their connectionswith evidence at a site are often accessible tobeginning or intermediate students.

Traditionally, field methods are viewed as a fundamen-tal technical skill and are taught to majors as part oftheir professional training. However, workshop par-ticipants believe that learning in the field may be play-ing other important and more fundamental roles increating geoscience expertise. For example, learning inthe field may be critical to the development of spatialreasoning, to the ability to create integrated mentalvisualizations of Earth processes, and to developingfacility with analyzing the quality and certainty of ob-servational data supporting geoscience theories. Muchresearch is needed in this area both to determine therole of field study in geoscience expertise and to estab-lish effective practices for field instruction at differentlevels of the curriculum.

Complementing learning in the field are learning ex-periences that engage students with geosciencedatasets. These experiences are widely acknowledgedas important to developing an understanding of scien-tific thinking and of geoscience expertise and as acritical aspect of science and geoscience education(Ireton et al., 1997; Manduca and Mogk, 2002a and2002b). Geoscience datasets include global datasets,datasets that integrate multiple data sources or types,


and results from models and simulations. Of particu-lar interest to workshop participants was achieving abetter understanding of principles for designing activi-ties that allow students to learn how to interpret dataand apply it to life decisions. A wide variety of re-search questions emerged including

• How to support students in learning to access,use, and interpret data;

• How to support students in learning to drawrelationships between data representations andreality or alternative hypotheses;

• What characterizes activities with data or datarepresentations that motivate learning; and

• What are effective design principles for data-rich learning activities for different purposesand audiences?

Activities that engage students with data are, morethan any other aspect of geoscience education, inter-twined with technological tools. Thus, much discus-sion was focused on the effective use of technology indeveloping data-rich learning environments. The fun-damental question in this area was “Do students learndifferently or better when working with differentkinds of technological representations?” Areas to con-sider include

• Does the ability to manipulate a representationmake it easier to interpret?

• Does familiarity with the 2- and 3-D visualiza-tions used in video games impact the ability ofstudents to interpret representations?

• How do technological representations allow usto guide students’ understanding of what is im-portant or meaningful in a representation?

• How can technology scaffold student learningabout data, representation, and Earth science?

A second major question regarded the role of techno-logically enhanced learning environments in replacingor supporting traditional teaching methods, includingfield observation, experiments, and physical models.

Working with Geologic Timeand Complex ModelsIn teaching about geologic time, geoscience teachers havedeveloped an array of techniques that can be catego-rized as featuring narrative, analogy, or representation.

Narrative is a familiar form for dealing with time. Weoften describe a geologic history in narrative form,telling the story of an area’s evolution.

Analogies are designed to help students grasp the rela-tionships between scales, rates, and processes and tojump from familiar experiences to geologic ones. Forexample, we typically help students understand theslow rates at which rocks deform by providing ananalogy to glass flowing in windowpanes, warmingbutter flowing on a dish, or silly putty being slowlystretched. The analogy between convecting coffee andconvection in the mantle, atmosphere, or ocean pro-vides a starting point for understanding the rates ofmovement in these very different environments.

Representations help us scale things appropriately.Most students and scientists begin their understand-ing of geologic time by creating a representation ofgeologic events on a time line which convenientlyconveys the brevity of human habitation of the planetcompared to all Earth history. Scaled computationalor physical models that mimic geologic processes inseconds, minutes, days, or months are important toolsfor students and scientists alike in developing an un-derstanding of the cumulative effect of slow processesoperating over large timescales.

These teaching techniques constitute an existing testbed for educational research and for design experi-ments that would increase understanding of how todevelop pivotal cases that expand students’ under-standing of time to include geologic timescales, rates,and observations of pre-history. A set of examplescould be developed to explore the use of narrative,current controversy, local motivation, hands-on activi-ties, and analysis of data with a temporal componentto develop understanding of geologic time and rates.A willingness to alter classroom organization offers thepotential to expand the traditional techniques. For


Activities that engage students with data are, more than any other aspect of geoscience

education, intertwined with technological tools. Thus, much discussion was focused on the

effective use of technology in developing data-rich learning environments.


example, an interesting use of narrative to understandaspects of time is explored in the recent best sellerLongitude, which uses a historical event to motivate un-derstanding. The current, heated debate regardingevolution and creationism has tremendous potential forexploring all aspects of geologic time, including thedevelopment of skill with ordering events, determiningrates, and placing events in intervals of absolute time.

Ideas about helping students learn to deal with com-plex models are perhaps less well developed in geo-science teaching, although workshop discussants feltstrongly that learning at all levels will be strongly af-fected by the success with which students are intro-duced to the complexity of geoscience theory anddata. There are opportunities for important new workin this area, addressing ideas as diverse as

• How do experts learn about complex systems?In particular, what are the relationships betweentheir development of a conceptual model ortheory and their observations and understand-ing of the natural system?

• What methods work in developing this type ofthinking in students? What are the paradig-matic models at different levels of instruction?

• What sequencing works to help students learnboth about pieces and the integrated system?

Learning Environments Based on ResearchExcellent learning environments develop and evolveover time. To effectively guide this evolution, it is es-sential that we understand when we are successful andthe causes of this success. Research is needed that ad-dresses all aspects of the learning environment, includ-ing objectives, instruction, student assessment, andprogram assessment.

• Learning objectives. The definition of appropri-ate learning goals for different levels of instruc-tion will be both a necessary point of departurefor research on learning environments and acontinuing result of the research. Desired out-comes should be articulated in terms of generalprinciples of the learning sciences, the range ofknowledge and skill in the entering students at

various levels, and known or hypothesizedlearning sequences in the discipline.

It should be pointed out here that, traditionally,the learning objectives for college science havenot been articulated this way at all. Instead, theyhave been defined in terms of the formal structureof knowledge in the discipline, leading to dis-cussions of coverage and prerequisite structure.

At present, goals for geoscience learning are notwell articulated. A common understanding ofthe characteristics of a geoscience expert is lack-ing, as is a firm understanding of what we wantstudents to be able to do at the end of either anintroduction to geoscience or the completion ofa major. These goals will necessarily vary amongthe different parts of the geoscience communityand from institution to institution. At present,however, we have few examples to draw from.Clearly, the content of a discipline matters. Theprogram of learning research sketched aboverequires a detailed study of expert knowledgeand pathways of acquisition.

• Learning environments and methods of in-struction. Once the objectives of learning areclear, research is needed to determine the rela-tionship between particular methods of instruc-tion and the learning that is desired. The work-shop demonstrated that geoscience educatorsare ready to undertake the program of researchand development that is required to design, test,and optimize teaching techniques for use in thegeosciences. As described above, learning in thefield and learning with data (and the associatedissues of technology) were of particular impor-tance to workshop participants. The nationallycoordinated effort developing out of the work-shop is a unique initiative in the learning sci-ences, one which will allow comparative re-search at multiple sites on a range of instruc-tional innovations addressing the issues in cog-nition and learning sketched above.

For example, one difficulty with traditional un-dergraduate curricula is that entry-level courseshave often been restricted to a relatively shallow


introduction of a very wide range of concepts.The presentation of the material and the modesof assessment encourage students to adopt rotememorization as a primary learning strategy.The resulting memory structures are oftenpoorly integrated (Bjork, 1999; Bereiter &Scardamalia, 1989). As a result, they lack persis-tence, are retrievable in only limited contexts,and provide very little support for reasoning orfor more advanced learning. Instructors in mid-and upper-level courses often feel that they mustre-teach the fundamental material, complainingthat students seemed to have learned nothing inthe introductory course.

To make progress in this area, we recommendthat researchers use the results of prior and on-going research to design target developmentalsequences for geoscience learning and to relatethem to current and potential organizations ofthe curriculum. For example, a goal for usefulintroductory instruction should be the acquisi-tion of coherent conceptual structures that sup-port scientific reasoning at beginning levels aswell as the transition to more advanced learning.Sociological research can help faculty developsuccessful methods for negotiating new rolesand responsibilities for students in their learn-ing and developing transitions from old ways tolearning environments that incorporate our bestunderstanding of how people learn.

• Student assessment. Building instructionalenvironments that are learner-centered as wellas content-centered has profound consequencesfor student assessment that are only beginningto be explored in college science. Instructionthat genuinely scaffolds conceptual developmentrequires continuous formative assessments thatprovide feedback to both students and teachersabout student learning. The relatively rigid separa-tion between instruction and tests that charac-terizes much of college science teaching breaksdown when assessments are used as learning ex-periences and when much of the instructionchallenges students to use concepts actively.

A key step in making progress will be to advanceour knowledge of how formative assessment canbe used to drive productive instruction in thegeosciences, as well as in college science gener-ally. The questions of what to assess and how toassess it must both be addressed. The develop-ment of learning objectives for various levels ofgeoscience instruction, based on learning re-search, will suggest concepts and forms of rea-soning that must be assessed at key points tosupport successful learning. Classroom researchwill involve the design and evaluation of learn-ing experiences that incorporate valid assess-ments. Summative student assessments, such ascourse grades, must also be carefully redesignedfor learning-centered environments, and re-search must be conducted to determine whetherthe new assessments succeed in measuring sig-nificant learning.

• Program assessment. In the development oflearning-oriented instructional environments,student assessment plays the dual roles ofsupporting individual student learning and ofproviding feedback to researchers andinstructors on the success of their interventions.An advantage of the community-based initiativeproposed here is that interventions in realinstructional settings can be sustained longenough to ensure not only that the initial designis conceptually sound but that research-orientedstudent assessments can be used to refine orredesign the interventions. The sustainedresearch-based curriculum development madepossible by the initiative has the potential tobuild a cadre of learning researchers within thegeoscience community.

An integrated research agenda that combines thesefour areas in a synergistic fashion can guide the devel-opment, assessment, and revision of geoscience pro-grams that are capable of developing geoscience exper-tise in a wide range of students destined to work in abroad range of professions.


Geoscientists are not fully aware of the advances in learning science that are relevant to their

teaching. Materials need to be created and disseminated that present these results in a context

that is accessible to geoscience faculty and makes a compelling case for adoption.

Credit, Background Image: NESDIS / National Climatic Data Center


RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACTION

nities that bring together geoscientists, educa-tors, and learning scientists are a fundamentalaspect of this capacity building, as are opportu-nities for faculty to develop their capacity toobserve student learning and design andevaluate their teaching practices.

Research ThemesNew research plays a central role in bringing researchon learning to the geosciences. Workshop participantsrecommend aggressive studies in three areas:

Cognitive ContentStudies must address the general cognitive character ofgeoscience and its relationship to other types of scien-tific expertise. In addition, studies that address thespecific mastery of key concepts such as plate tecton-ics, geologic time, or the climate system will beneeded.

Learning and DevelopmentStudies of the learning pathways that lead to geo-science expertise provide an understanding of stu-dents’ initial conceptions and the challenges of achiev-ing stable conceptual change. Specific incomplete orfaulty initial conceptions will have to be identified, aswill intermediate states of knowledge in which noviceand expert conceptions coexist uneasily or which relytoo heavily on memorization or conceptually shallowalgorithmic skills.

A FUNDAMENTAL OUTCOME OF THEMEETING WAS THE RECOGNITION THATBRINGING RESEARCH ON LEARNING TOTHE GEOSCIENCES PROVIDES IMPORTANTOPPORTUNITIES FOR BOTH IMPROVINGGEOSCIENCE AND SCIENCE EDUCATIONand furthering our understanding of how peoplethink and learn. A concerted effort will benefitgeoscience research and education, science educationmore broadly, learning science, and educationalresearch. Workshop participants recommend activitiesin three areas:

• Research — New research that addresses areasof high interest to both geoscientists and learn-ing scientists will have major benefits in bothfields, improving the ability of geoscientists toboth pursue their own research and to instructtheir students while providing new avenues toaddress important issues in understanding hu-man cognition and learning.

• Dissemination — Currently, geoscientists arenot fully aware of the advances in learning sci-ence that are relevant to their teaching. Materi-als need to be created and disseminated thatpresent these results in a context that is acces-sible to geoscience faculty and makes a compel-ling case for adoption.

• Professional development — Capacity needs tobe developed for research on learning in thegeosciences. Professional development opportu-


Learning Environments and InstructionStudies are needed that determine the relationship be-tween teaching and learning in the geosciences andplace decision making about instructional methods ona scientific footing. These studies must include

• Defining appropriate learning goals that are ar-ticulated in terms of general principles of thelearning sciences, skills and knowledge pos-sessed by entering students, and learning se-quences;

• Determining the relationship between particu-lar methods of instruction and articulated learn-ing outcomes;

• Developing continuous formative assessmentmethods for student learning; and

• Analyzing assessment results to design new ex-periments and improvements in learning envi-ronments.

We propose a coordinated effort among geoscienceeducators and learning scientists that works in a holis-tic fashion to articulate what is meant by geoscienceexpertise, the cognitive pathways to achieving this ex-pertise, and the critical aspects of effective learningenvironments. This research and the tools developedfor its implementation will allow students and facultyto understand what they are trying to learn and how itcan most effectively be accomplished and to monitorthe progress of learning.

DisseminationImportant information about the application of re-search on learning to education has been available formore than a decade, and excellent publications writ-ten specifically for faculty summarizing this researchare now available (NRC, 1999; NRC, 2001). Whilethere is much work that we can do to bring these re-sources to the attention of geoscience faculty, work-shop participants emphasized that it will also be im-portant to publish materials that place these researchresults in a geoscience context. Materials for the phys-ics and medical communities that speak directly to thespecific issues and examples faced in their classrooms

provide an excellent example of the type of resourcesthat are needed (Redish, 2003; Michael and Modell,2003).

Similarly, it will be important to produce materialsthat summarize the compelling case developed inphysics for improved learning gains related to activeengagement of students (Hake, 1998) and that drawrelationships to learning in the geosciences. Publica-tions that target geoscience faculty and educators andrelate to their experiences will be much more effectivein capturing their interest and transforming their un-derstanding of learning science. Once they have begunto understand the implications of research on learningfor their teaching, they will be ready to read the exist-ing literature.

Developing materials that will speak to geoscientists isthe first step in bringing existing research to this com-munity. This must then be coupled with a strong dis-semination effort. Publication in newspapers andjournals that reach the geoscience community canform a starting point for this dissemination. Profes-sional societies (e.g., AGU/American GeophysicalUnion, GSA/Geological Society of America, AMS/American Meteorological Society, NAGT/NationalAssociation of Geoscience Teachers) provide impor-tant avenues for dissemination through their meetings,committees, and outreach programs. The first steps inthis area have already taken place with workshop par-ticipants and other learning scientists involved in ses-sions at

• GSA (Pardee Session—Toward a Better Under-standing of the Complicated Earth: Lessonsfrom Geologic Research, Education and Cogni-tive Science), http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/talks.html

• AGU 2002 Fall Meeting (Using Global Data ina Local Context, link to Fall 2002 meeting, Fri-day afternoon sessions), http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/sessionsf

• On the Cutting Edge workshops sponsored byNAGT (Using Global Data Sets in Teaching


Earth Processes, Design Principles for CreatingEffective Web-Based Learning Resources in theGeosciences), http://serc. carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/globaldata02/index.html andhttp://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/webresources03/index.html

• The 4th International Conference on Geo-science Education (Calgary 2003), http://www.geoscied.org/techprog.htm

This dissemination process provides a unique oppor-tunity to study how a disciplinary community comesto incorporate new information from an exteriorsource in its educational practice. Documentation ofwhat works in the dissemination of research on learn-ing to geoscientists provides the basis for an importantcontribution to the larger educational community.

Professional DevelopmentFundamental to implementation of the researchagenda put forward in this report is the creation of anew community of disciplinary science education re-searchers in geoscience. This community will form abridge between the work taking place in cognitive sci-ence, education, and other scientific disciplines andfaculty and educators in geoscience. The core of thisnew group includes the workshop participants andothers including Ph.D. geoscientists who have shiftedtheir focus to research on learning, learning scientistsand educators with a special focus of the geosciences,faculty, curriculum developers, and teachers who areworking to test the implementation of learning sci-ence theory in the classroom, and others who work onspecial projects that improve our collective ability toteach geoscience.

Workshop participants recognized the importance ofnurturing this newly emerging community by foster-ing opportunities to learn from one another and towork together. Recommended activities include:

• Sessions at professional society meetings andpublications in journals on research taking placein learning in the geosciences in all three con-tributing disciplines: cognitive science, educa-tion, and geoscience;

• Small grants to enable the establishment of col-laborations and site visits;

• Joint projects and meetings that sustain andbuild collaboration;

• The establishment of a Science of LearningCenter in the Geosciences;

• A special outreach effort to early-careerresearchers in geoscience, education, andcognitive science; and

• Collecting and disseminating examples ofcollaborative projects that exploit the synergiesbetween learning science and geoscience(visualization appears to be a particularly fertilearea for this).

Workshop participants felt that a second, equally im-portant focus for professional development should beimproving the ability of present and future faculty andteachers to reflect on their teaching practice and assessits effectiveness. An integral part of this ability is theskills needed to observe students engaging in learning,to evaluate student learning and its relationship toteaching, and to implement changes in instructionbased on the results of observation and evaluation.While all faculty will benefit from increases in theseskills, it is particularly important that faculty teachingfuture teachers model this behavior. Workshop partici-pants recognized that a variety of approaches to facultyprofessional development, including publications andworkshops, could be effective in this area. However, thedevelopment of action research projects that engage fac-ulty in observations of their students appears to be aparticularly promising approach. Work in the UnitedKingdom that is engaging faculty at a variety of institu-tions in research on the impact of field studies on learn-ing (King, 1993; King, 1998) serves as a model for thetype of program that might be undertaken. This pro-gram might begin by offering opportunities to inter-ested faculty across the community.


To optimize learning about the Earth, a multidisciplinary research effort is needed, drawing

on the expertise of geoscience educators, science educators in related disciplines, learning

scientists, and cognitive psychologists.

Credit, Background Image: NWS/National Centers for Environmental Prediction / Climate Prediction Center


CONCLUSIONS

THE STUDY OF THE EARTH, ITS COMPOSI-TION, STRUCTURE, PROCESSES, HISTORY,AND EVOLUTION is an integral part of science,technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)education. Studies of the Earth system provide naturallaboratories that are intrinsically interesting and acces-sible to students, that demonstrate applications offundamental principles from sister physical and lifesciences, and that demonstrate the integral connectionsbetween the Earth and our personal and communal lives(Ireton et al., 1997). Studies of the Earth system areincreasingly multidisciplinary, emphasizing the con-nections, relations, and feedback mechanisms amongand between different Earth system components.

At the same time, realizing the open, heterogeneous,dynamic, and complex nature of the Earth, there isgrowing recognition of the importance of teachingabout the Earth using a systems approach. This pre-sents many challenges and opportunities. To optimizelearning about the Earth, a multidisciplinary researcheffort is needed, drawing on the expertise of geo-science educators, science educators in related disci-plines, learning scientists, and cognitive psychologists.Workshop participants affirmed that:

• The geosciences offer scientific knowledge andmethodologies that are of broad interest, withunique characteristics that complement researchon learning in related disciplines. Special focuson time, spatial relations, complex systems, andthe use of visualizations will extend current knowl-edge of how people learn in these domains.

• There is a need for discipline-wide professionaldevelopment activities, including integration ofresearch on learning in the geosciences into cur-rent instructional practice and training of geo-science faculty to contribute to research onlearning through explorations of their ownlearning environments.

• There is a concomitant need for disseminationof the results of research on learning in the geo-sciences for broad application in curricular de-sign and implementation.

• A coordinated, collaborative effort is needed toengage a discipline-wide research program onlearning in the geosciences, to facilitate learningfor ALL students, in diverse learning environ-ments. Towards this goal, it is recommendedthat a discipline-specific Center for Research onLearning in the Geosciences be established.

This workshop provided the first steps towards form-ing a new scholarly community dedicated to under-standing learning in the geosciences. The workshopparticipants strongly felt the need to increase the rec-ognition of and reward for geoscientists who under-take research on learning.

• Geoscience education research should be pur-sued as a research field in many institutions. Itshould be recognized as both objective and ex-perimental in nature.


• Geoscience education research should developpublication and dissemination mechanisms thatpromote peer review and reproducibility typicalof any other research field.

• Geoscience education research can and shouldbe subject to the same criteria for evaluation(papers published, grants, etc.) as research inother fields.

• The application of outcomes of this researchshould promote assessment and improvement ofteaching and learning.

Geoscience education research should be championedas being as worthy of funding support from govern-ment agencies as are other areas of scientific research.All interested colleagues from the Earth sciences, sisterdisciplines, and learning sciences are invited and en-couraged to participate.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This workshop, the associated website (http://serc.carleton.edu/research_on_learning/), and report weremade possible by funding from the National ScienceFoundation (REC 021365) and the Johnson Founda-tion, which provided use of the Wingspread Confer-ence Center, excellent food, and the invaluable sup-port of its staff. We are particularly grateful to theworkshop participants, who were willing to jump en-thusiastically into a joint venture among geoscience,cognitive science, education, and disciplinary educa-tion research in physics, chemistry, biology, and medi-cine. Their willingness to give of their time, trust oneanother, participate fully, translate for one anotherideas from foreign disciplinary vocabularies, and ex-plore deeply the nature of research on learning in thegeoscience made this workshop and its products suc-cessful.

Lastly, Cathy Manduca and David Mogk would liketo express special thanks to Neil Stillings, who bravelyand cheerfully accepted an invitation to co-convenethe workshop with people he had never met. His will-ingness to engage his colleagues in the cognitive sci-ence community made the workshop possible and hisongoing commitment to the project has made this arewarding and productive collaboration.

Photos by Science Education Resource Center staff.

Editing, design, and production by Ashmore Ink, Northfield, MN.


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Science Education Resource CenterCarleton CollegeOne North College StreetNorthfield, MN 55057Phone: (507) 646-5749

http://serc.carleton.edu/research_on_learning/

LearningBRINGING

Research TO THE

GEOSCIENCES

ON

Documents

Research BRINGING ONLearning GEOSCIENCES · cognitive scientists. The time is ripe for such a partnership because: • Geoscience educators are receptive to research partnerships