A PROGRAM FOR TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: THE EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE EDUCATION ALLIANCE

Whether teachers are looking for professional development courses or just wanting to find K-12 geoscience lessons, the Earth System Science Education Alliance can meet teachers’ needs. Featuring inquiry-based approaches that make use of geospatial data, teachers can have students modeling the work of scientists. Through NSF, NASA and NOAA support, the program has expanded to 43 institutions of higher learning that are committed to teacher education in Earth system science. The courses are designed to deepen teachers’ content knowledge within an inquiry environment through reflection, analysis and self-discovery. Topics are event based and feature in-depth coverage of global climate change in accordance with NOAA's Climate Literacy and NSF's Earth Science Literacy Principles. The courses familiarize participants with Earth system analyses and provide a suite of techniques that can be employed to facilitate student learning. Each of these methods takes teachers out of the role of “middle man” (i.e., the deliverer of content) and creates a student-centered classroom.