EARTH SCIENCE LITERACY: K-12 TEACHER AND GEOSCIENCE PROFESSOR PERSPECTIVES

Geoscience professors and K-12 teachers at a national geoscience meeting completed one of two surveys designed to elicit perspectives on Earth science literacy (ESL) topics. In Survey 1, participants chose between two definitions of ESL, described which experiences are most valuable for ESL and listed hurdles to improving ESL. Survey 2 asked participants to judge the importance of 16 concepts and skills for an introductory Earth science college course for non-science majors. The concepts and skills were culled from a merging of the Ocean, Atmosphere, Climate and Earth Science Literacy Principles and the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Goals for Liberal Learning and College-level Learning. Responses to survey 1 indicate that the two cohorts of teachers and professors perceive different priorities for improving scientific literacy. K-12 teachers’ responses (n₁=11) focused more on science content learning issues than did geoscience professors. Geoscience professors (n₁=25) were more likely to select a definition of science literacy centering on functional, decision-making citizens. Both groups highly rank issues related to the human-Earth interaction in their answers to the questions, but each group emphasized these issues differently overall in their responses. Responses from K-12 teachers’ (n₂=11) and geoscientists’ (n₂=25) to survey 2 were ranked by relative importance of each concept and skill. Three concepts and one skill were rated in the top five of both cohorts, including the concept that Earth systems are explored using observations and the skill of critical thinking and problem solving. Four of the other concepts were rated very differently by the two cohorts: humans as agents of change and the role of the sun in Earth’s climate were deemed important to K-12 teachers whereas the age of the Earth and the concept of continuous change in Earth systems were rated highly by geoscientists. Overall, survey 2 suggests both cohorts rank scientific concepts higher than skills as components of ESL. Both surveys provide insights into the similarities and differences in how these two cohorts view literacy. Although many themes and concepts were similarly important to both cohorts, the differences may be alluding to potentially significant differences in philosophical approaches.