G.E.T. IN THE FIELD: MOVING BEYOND ROCKS IN A BOX TO IMPROVE TEACHERS' GEOSCIENCE LITERACY

Instruction in the Earth Sciences is nearing extinction in most high schools. Thus, the G.E.T. (Geoscience Experience for Teachers) in the Field project aimed to improve high school teachers’ Earth Science literacy by providing 10 days of authentic geoscience experiences focused particularly on increasing high school teachers’ conceptual understanding of aquifers and related geochemistry. Participants included seven Oklahoma high school teachers who taught subjects other than earth science. Researchers expected this project would increase teachers’ content knowledge and ability to integrate geoscience concepts into their biology, chemistry, or physics curricula.

Participants for this program included high school teachers from underrepresented groups (i.e., Native American, women) and/or those teaching in high schools with a high percentage of students from underrepresented groups. Student enrollment at teachers’ campuses ranged from 96 to 2,243 students. The proportion of students classified as (1) Native American ranged from 10-52 percent and (2) economically disadvantaged ranged from 18-71 percent at teachers’ schools.

Three pre/post measures assessed changes in teachers’ geoscience literacy: the Geologic Concept Inventory (Libarkan & Anderson, 2005), geoscience concept maps (Hough, O'Rode, Terman, & Weissglass, 2007), and the STEBI-A (Riggs & Enochs, 1990) to measure changes in teachers’ earth science teaching self-efficacy. Results indicate that teachers entered the program with varying amounts of geological concept knowledge. However, all teachers increased in their (a) content knowledge of aquifers and geochemistry and (b) personal earth science teaching self-efficacy.

This presentation will explain how G.E.T. in the Field helped teachers move beyond “rocks in a box” and see the natural connections of the earth science to their classrooms. Helping high school science teachers gain the content knowledge and the pedagogical skills to incorporate the geosciences into their biology, chemistry, and physics classrooms will provide the geoscience education community a backdoor into high school science curriculum will provide the geoscience education community a backdoor into high shool science curriculum.