EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A CLASSROOM AND FIELD-BASED CURRICULUM IN SEDIMENTATION AND CHANGE THROUGH TIME FOR PRE-SERVICE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

Field investigations are commonly used to enhance the content knowledge of geoscience majors, and it is widely recognized that field work adds significantly to student understanding of geologic processes. However, many pre-service teachers and other non-majors often do not receive substantial geologic education in the field. We report results from a mixed-methods study which measures the effectiveness of an inquiry-based classroom and field curriculum designed to teach basic sedimentology and change through geologic time in a teacher-education course at SDSU. We administered a suite of instruments before and after classroom instruction and after subsequent field work. A post-test was administered three weeks after all instruction to test long-term retention. Analysis of the quantifiable portions of our instruments show that our curriculum provides a significant (p<.05) improvement in content knowledge between the pre- and post-tests. Item analysis shows that most students (in coastal Southern California) have prior understanding of cross-cutting relationships, deltas, ripple formation, and near-shore marine environments. Our classroom curriculum appears to produce the biggest quantifiable gains in low-level, fact-oriented knowledge. Qualitative analysis of student responses to questions probing their interpretation of past environments from a vertical sequence of sedimentary rock units showed the effect of the field component. Identical short-response questions were administered immediately before and two weeks after the field experience. Student responses show an overall shift from understanding sedimentary deposits only in terms of energy required to transport various sizes of clastic material before the field experience, to a more integrated understanding of migrating depositional environments, usually described in terms of the sedimentary rocks studied in the field area. However, significant confusion remained for some students in understanding how changing near-shore depositional environments were affected by sea-level changes. Our results suggest that field investigations do enhance content knowledge by providing a concrete framework for classroom learning that otherwise might not be fully integrated into a coherent understanding of geologic processes and history.