USING THE HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AS A VEHICLE IN TEACHING THE "WHAT" AND THE "HOW" OF GEOLOGY IN A LARGE LECTURE SERVICE COURSE SETTING

The coming decades will showcase the importance of literacy in the geosciences for citizens of the world. Problems such as anthropogenic climate change, safe drinking water, and finding and developing mineral and energy resources will require an informed citizenry for developing, and implementing appropriate policies that will benefit society as a whole. Literacy in the geoscience includes not just the content (the ‘what’ of geoscience) but also the process (the ‘how’ of geoscience). To take an even broader view, understanding the nature of science (NOS) for students is an important goal and has been emphasised for some decades.

This presentation reports on preliminary findings of students’ development of NOS understandings in a large (n=355) introductory geology course, for mainly non-science majors. The course focussed on telling the her/histories of the development of geoscientific knowledge around three main themes (course topics): the earth is a historical entity, that history is very, very long, and the earth is a dynamic system. A final theme took an explicit look at the nature of science (and geology, specifically).

Student responses to prompts given at the beginning of the course emphasized science being about(A) hypothesis testing/performing the scientific method, (B) what I call “school science”, or following step-by-step instructions, and (C) trial-and-error until achieving a desired result. These are not surprising findings as they match very well with the nature of science instruction and especially school science laboratory activities.

By the end of the course, student ideas about science included: (A) there are multiple methods/processes, (B) Knowledge is based on assumptions and evidence, (C) scientific knowledge is built on prior knowledge, (D) scientific knowledge is influenced by human bias and other social pressures, and (E) scientific knowledge is explanatory. These findings show promise for students to develop a more nuanced understanding of NOS, while also tending to the science content of the course.