EARTH SCIENCE TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: LESSONS LEARNED FROM TWO DECADES OF THE BAY AREA EARTH SCIENCE INSTITUTE

In 1990, the Bay Area Earth Science Institute (BAESI), a professional development program for teachers of grades 4-12, was founded to help improve the quality and quantity of earth science taught in pre-college classrooms. Despite the relevance of earth science to Californians who must contend with such issues as seismic hazards, landslides, and water scarcity, earth science was poorly represented in the K-12 curriculum and was often taught by out-of-field teachers. Operating in the Department of Geology at San Jose State University and funded by the National Science Foundation, Chevron, Intel, and other community partners, BAESI has now served more than 2,000 teachers in summer and Saturday workshops that blend fundamental earth and environmental science concepts with strategies for teaching them. Teacher participants receive classroom materials and the option to earn university credit.

Twenty years after BAESI's inception, the amount and breadth of earth science taught in middle and high schools remains far less than that of other sciences in spite of national and state standards that have placed earth science on a par with biology, chemistry, and physics in the pre-college curriculum. To compound the problem, high school earth science is not considered to be a suitable laboratory-based course for admission to the University of California. The need to support the teaching of earth science through teacher professional development continues, and is underscored by the critical and growing demand for an Earth-literate populace that can make informed decisions about energy use, climate change, natural hazard mitigation, and water quality and supply.

BAESI continues to offer face-to-face teacher workshops that routinely attract more applicants than spaces available. We are also developing an online component accessible to teachers anywhere, anytime. The BAESI online library will be a "one-stop shopping" resource that supplies science content through a series of podcasts, ready-to-use classroom activities, and recommended resources needed to teach standards-based earth and environmental science to pre-college students