TEACHERS ON THE LEADING EDGE: DESIGNING A PLACE-BASED AND FIELD-BASED TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM FEATURING THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST ACTIVE CONTINENTAL MARGIN

Secondary teachers of Earth Science often lack the field experience that can make textbook concepts come alive. Exposing Earth Science teachers to geologic examples that can be walked on, hammered on, and photographed enhances their knowledge while providing opportunities for observations and analyses that instill enthusiasm for inquiry-based instructional methods. In a transect across Oregon, learners of Earth Science can examine: accreted terranes of northeast Oregon; active stratovolcanoes of the Cascades; docked seamounts of the Coast Range; and evidences of great earthquakes along the Cascadia subduction zone. We have gathered a team of Earth scientists and educators to design “Teachers on the Leading Edge”, a field-based teacher professional development program featuring a transect across the active continental margin of Oregon. Several of us have experience with geologic field-based and place-based teacher professional development programs and teaching science through art. These programs featured constructivist approaches with emphasis on developing outcrop observational skills, deciphering patterns in geologic observations on a range of scales (millimeters to mountains), and problem-solving methods to discover geologic processes that account for patterns on and in the landscape. Teachers on the Leading Edge will provide a regional sense of place and an understanding of how plate tectonic processes shaped Pacific Northwest geology into distinct coast-parallel belts. We seek to establish a field-based, problem solving, and observational emphasis to investigate the geology of the active continental margin while broadening the range of disciplines and approaches. Program themes will include: (1) Convergent margin processes from great earthquakes to continent building through volcanism and accretion; (2) Earth System Science using the John Day Fossil Beds to investigate the 30 million year record of faunal and floral succession and paleoclimate changes; (3) simple geophysical studies that illuminate the geology beneath the tree-covered landscape and provide an introduction to anticipated EarthScope discoveries of continents in motion; and (4) geologic hazards as wondrous rather than mysterious aspects of living on the leading edge of our continent.