Teaching assistants (TAs) are an underutilized resource with respect to geoscience education. Geology teaching assistants often teach hundreds of students each semester in physical and historical labs. After teaching numerous sections they begin to observe patterns of learning and the common stumbling blocks that students experience in the freshmen labs. The laboratory setting provides a window into how and why students struggle with certain geologic concepts.

A qualitative geoscience education research project was conducted at the University of New Orleans, Department of Geology and Geophysics. It examined the perspectives of four historical geology TAs regarding their student’s abilities to learn and synthesize earth science material. Three of the teaching assistants were veteran instructors and one was new to the department. Qualitative data was collected via observation exercises, interviews, and focus group discussions. Interview and focus group discussions were audiotaped, transcribed and analyzed.

An analysis of the focus group, interviews, and observations yielded four problematic domains in which students struggled. The first and most prevalent was the three-dimensional visualization domain, which is used when constructing cross-sections and block diagrams. All four TAs unanimously agreed this is the single most difficult concept for their students to grasp. The second domain involved geologic time and its relation to humans. Students could understand time relationships of rock strata but had difficulty incorporating the insignificance of human time with respect to geologic time.

The third domain involved the pedagogy used to teach the geologic material. In general, TAs found that students prefer to memorize information rather than using abstract thinking to solve problems. Students were more comfortable doing fossil notebooks and memorizing dates than writing essays describing geologic environments using the fossil indicators as clues. The last domain was communication skills. Students struggled with writing and verbally explaining their ideas. Even with minimal emphasis on the vocabulary students had difficulty expressing where they were stuck and what component of a problem they couldn’t solve.