HOW TO REBUILD GEOSCIENCE DEPARTMENTS AND FUEL THE REVOLUTION IN EARTH & SPACE SCIENCE EDUCATION

Historically the geosciences have failed to produce a critical mass of qualified teacher-advocates to secure a foothold in secondary education. Biology education faced similar low status at the turn of the 20th century, yet has risen to become the highest enrolled science course in high schools nationally with the most number of certified teachers; 51,048 biology vs. 14,057 Earth science teachers (CCSSO, 2001). Secondary Earth science education was never considered to be a viable course until the 1960s. Thus, geoscience education has lagged behind the other main science domains by at least 50 years. This late start has greatly disadvantaged the position of Earth science in high schools; only about 7% of U.S. high school students take Earth and space science as opposed to 88% who take biology (TERC, 2002). How did this happen? Most likely through graduating greater numbers of biology majors each year, with women (39,913 = 62%) now exceeding men (23,979 = 38%), than in the geosciences (women: 1,358 = 43%; men: 1,812 = 57%) (NSF, 2007). But this trend in biology education could also be due to a greater acceptance of teaching as an acceptable career for those with a life science degree, especially for women. Women have steadily increased their proportions as pre-college science teachers since 1977, now roughly 52% (NSF, 2007); equal with men in secondary Earth science, high school biology (52%) and chemistry (47%), but are still only 30% of high school physics teachers. Therefore, geoscience departments with fewer women will produce fewer geoscience teachers. Unfortunately, geoscience departments are granting roughly 65% fewer degrees than they were in the early 1980s (Ridky, 2002), forcing some to close their doors. To complicate matters, an estimate from the last National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (Horizon Research, 2000) indicated that a third of Earth science teachers will be of retirement age by 2010. By enacting a broader, more humanistic, use of a geoscience degree that may attract more women, geoscience departments could potentially expand their enrollments and fuel the revolution in Earth and space science education with more well-qualified teachers.