USING PLACE-BASED ESSEA MODULES TO IMPROVE EARTH SYSTEMS SCIENCE CONTENT KNOWLEDGE AND CONFIDENCE IN TEACHING EARTH SCIENCES AMONG MIDDLE AND SECONDARY TEACHERS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY

Place-based education has gained significant popularity in the last ten years, as has the earth systems approach to earth science education. As part of their partnership activities with the Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA), Morehead State University is testing place-based ESSEA pilot modules and generating new place-based modules. All modules use the earth systems approach to increase teachers’ content knowledge and confidence with the material.

ESSEA courses have been taught at Morehead State since 2002. In that time, teachers had indicated that the content covered was not relevant to issues facing Kentucky and did not address content their students could relate to. Modules developed in the last year are significantly more place-based than original modules. We wanted to know if new modules chosen for inclusion in the middle and secondary ESSEA course taught at Morehead State were improving teachers’ content knowledge and confidence with the material.

Teacher content knowledge was assessed through performance on pre- and post-tests and on performance on ESS analyses completed for each module. Teacher attitude toward, and confidence with, the material was assessed through comparisons of pre- and post-course surveys. Preliminary results show that, while content knowledge does not appear to increase in pre- and post-tests for individual modules, ESS analyses become increasing sophisticated and content-specific through the course. Pre- and post-course surveys show improved teacher attitude and increased confidence in teaching earth systems science content.