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Paper No. 14
Presentation Time: 4:55 PM

ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY AND INQUIRY: A GEOSPATIAL CURRICULUM TO SUPPORT MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHERS AND STUDENTS


BODZIN, Alec1, SAHAGIAN, Dork2, ANASTASIO, David J.3, BRESSLER, Denise1, KULO, Violet4, PEFFER, Tamara1, DEMPSEY, Christopher3 and CIRUCCI, Lori5, (1)Education and Human Services, Lehigh University, A113 Iacocca Hall, 111 Research Dr, Bethlehem, PA 18015, (2)Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lehigh University, 1 W. Packer Avenue, Bethlehem, PA 18015, (3)Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lehigh University, 1 West Packer Avenue, Bethlehem, PA 18015, (4)College of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Bethlehem, MD 21218, (5)Broughal Middle School, Bethlehem, PA 18015, amb4@lehigh.edu

Environmental issues pertaining to energy resources, climate change, and land use change are quite complex, involve understanding new scientific research findings, and entail thinking skills for interpreting data that are geospatial in nature. Teaching and learning about geospatial aspects of Earth science requires that science teachers apply effective science pedagogical approaches to implement geospatial technologies into classroom instruction. Teacher professional development can be highly effective when designed to accompany a particular curriculum that will be adopted and implemented in the classroom. As part of an ongoing systemic curriculum reform initiative to promote (1) environmental literacy and inquiry and (2) the development of geospatial thinking skills with geospatial technologies as an essential component of the middle school science curriculum, we developed three curriculum units: Energy (40 day instructional sequence), Climate (21 days), and Land Use Change (20 days) (http://www.ei.lehigh.edu/eli/). The units include embedded supports designed to assist teacher development of both Earth science content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge for effective curriculum enactment. We developed these supports to address the need to provide “just in time” professional development experiences to help educate teachers about important Earth science topics and to support their development of geospatial pedagogical content knowledge to teach with a novel curriculum that promotes geospatial thinking skills that are important for investigating a range of environmental issues in our society. Teachers’ implementation of these units has resulted in increased science content knowledge of both teachers and students. Our implementation findings also reveal growth in teachers’ pedagogical design capacity to use GIS and virtual globes for the teaching of environmental sciences to a diversity of classroom learners.

Session No. 122

T70. Fostering the Next Generation: Support for Pre-College Teachers and Students by Professional Societies, Institutions, and Federal Agencies
Monday, 5 November 2012: 1:30 PM-5:30 PM
210AB (Charlotte Convention Center)
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 44, No. 7, p.309
© Copyright 2012 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.
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