OPTIMIZING “FOSSIL PARKS”: RESEARCH-BASED IMPLICATIONS FOR ENHANCING PUBLIC GEOLITERACY WITHIN INFORMAL FIELD ENVIRONMENTS

Often visitors to informal learning sites encounter museum settings or protected sites such as US National Parks. While these informal venues can promote geoscience learning, a fairly standard characteristic of an informal educational site is that the visitor cannot take away any part of the site—except an admission ticket or brochure. The concept of fossil park (Clary & Wandersee, 2011, 2014) is novel in that visitors retain a small number of fossils when they leave the site. Depending upon the nature and quality of informal education available, fossil park venues may serve to effectively bridge education between structured museums or national parks, and non-interpreted collecting sites located with roadside geology guides.

Informal science learning is an important venue for the teaching and learning of scientific concepts (Falk 2001; McComas 2006; Wandersee & Clary 2006). Adults primarily learn science within informal learning environments, and even K-12 students engage in informal science learning more often than they learn science in classroom environments (Falk & Dierking 2002). Therefore, informal geoscience sites have the potential to greatly improve public geoliteracy.

This June 2014 research investigation of fossil parks targeted 4 sites in Ohio, operated under the state park system and the US Army Corps of Engineers. The sites differed in the opportunities for geoscience learning, including signage development, collecting opportunities, and site interpretation. While visitors can collect fossils, site analysis revealed greater potential for promoting the Big Ideas of Earth Science Literacy (ESLI, 2010) for improved understanding of important geoscience constructs. Four major themes emerged for maximizing informal geoscience learning at underdeveloped fossil park sites: 1) geoscience constructs must be explicit, and directly tied to the collecting site; 2) geologic time, fossilization, and evolution of Earth’s organisms should be interpreted for visitor understanding; 3) fossil organism samples must be provided near the site, through signage, brochures, or displays; and 4) explicit connections between fossil sites and modern issues can facilitate visitor understanding of site relevance, “big picture” understanding, and Earth sustainability.