FIELDWORK, REAL & VIRTUAL, AS A DRIVER OF INQUIRY IN EDUCATION: WHY DOES THIS PLACE LOOK THE WAY IT DOES?

Fieldwork is distinguished from fieldtrips in that fieldwork is driven by questions and fieldtrips are driven by answers. Fieldtrips are often characterized by teachers pointing things out. The virtual fieldwork we are designing for educational contexts is characterized by students figuring things out. Fieldwork, real or virtual, has the potential to: (1) embody the key characteristics of inquiry in the National Science Education Standards, (2) provide focus and real-world application for curricula, (3) structure a system of assessment, and (4) use the local environment as a stepping stone to deeper understanding of the Earth system. Virtual fieldwork involves sufficient images and specimens to permit a wide variety of observations and open-endedness in problem-solving.

We have chosen a specific essential question around which to build virtual fieldwork experiences: “Why does this place look the way it does?” In the process of answering that question, learners address key elements of scientific inquiry (Olson and Loucks-Horsley, 2000), as they 1) are engaged in scientifically oriented questions, 2) give priority to evidence in responding to questions; 3) formulate explanations from evidence; 4) connect explanations to scientific knowledge; and 5) communicate and justifies explanations to others.

Virtual fieldwork is also an effective means of teaching Earth system content. In order to engage meaningfully in the process of inquiry, students have an invested interested in understanding the observations they make. Secondly, fieldwork often involves, for the scientist, multiple visits to the same site to test new ideas with new observations. Thirdly, engagement in the question of “Why does this place look like this?” requires understanding multiple processes in Earth system science and how they interact; the same site can be visited through a curriculum to revisit landforms, bedrock, structural features, weathering and erosion, local climate, geologic history, and so on. And virtual fieldtrips to familiar sorts of Earth system features enhances relevance to students' lives. This work is supported by NSF grant ESI-0455833.