IDENTIFYING STUDENT ATTITUDES AND PRECONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE GEOSCIENCES

            Understanding the undergraduate student population and identifying opportunities for recruitment in the introductory physical geology courses at Kansas State University (KSU) was the impetus to survey fifteen lab sections.   We wanted to quantify how many students were science majors with hopes of becoming geologists, business majors trying to get a required science credit, education majors fulfilling content area requirements or just students undecided in their academic direction?  The trends found in the survey results were used to revamp the lab curriculum and enhance recruiting efforts within the lab sections.

            The survey used was a modified version by Delaughter et al., (1998), and completed by 456 students in the KSU physical geology laboratory sections during the fall and spring 2005-2006 semesters. The survey targeted four areas: interests and background, attitudes and preconceptions, general career interests and potential interest in a geoscience career.  Nine graduate teaching assistants administered surveys and student participation was voluntary. The data collected were separated into two main categories: gender and ethnicity, with all other questions correlated with these two categories. Eighty-five percent of the respondents were Caucasian and 15% were classified as non-Caucasian. Of the 456 participants, 44% were males and 56% were female. According to the data, over half of those questioned were freshmen and sophomores (56%). The remaining students were juniors or seniors.

            The following trends were revealed during data analysis: male students were distributed from a variety of areas (urban, suburban, rural, and small town) whereas 53% of the females originated from suburban areas.  Fifty-eight percent of the females thought that fieldwork was the most appealing aspect of geology.  Sixty-eight percent of all of the students agreed and strongly agreed that they enjoy outdoor activities like hiking, camping, hunting, and fishing.  Fifty-three percent of the males were interested in classic geology, where 42% of the females preferred environmental geology.  

            Better understanding the attitudes and preconceptions of introductory students reveal a window into how departments can initiate greater interest in geoscience careers.