Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Document Type

Chapter

Publication Date

2018

Abstract

Geoscience instruction today is carried out in a range of settings and with variously situated and richly contextualized teaching modalities. However, the pace and the excitement of technological and methodological advances in education tend to outstrip the more deliberate progress of relevant educational research and assessment. Further, geoscience education receives less attention and support on a national scale than do biology, chemistry, and physics education. As a result, many recent influential studies which demonstrated the effectiveness of active learning in undergraduate STEM, include little or no data from geoscience education. In order to close these gaps and render future instructional strategies as effective as possible, (a) there must be better coordination among researchers and educators in our own professional community and with those in other STEM disciplines; (b) higher standards of evidence must be applied to research in many cases; and (c) certain barriers at the instructional level to full and effective implementation of best practices must still be overcome. In this theme chapter, five grand challenges related to these issues are identified and described to spur more effective, accessible, inclusive, relevant, and practical geoscience teaching and learning.

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