ESTABLISHING A DATA-FOCUSED FOUNDATION FOR K-12 GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION ADVOCACY

The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) has played a key role in geoscience education at all levels across its 75-year history. While much of AGI’s work in education has been to develop resources, professional development programs, communication, and networking opportunities to support formal and informal educators, it has also provided sustained advocacy for geoscience education. That advocacy has taken many forms, including demonstrating the role of geoscience education in society, in maintaining and enhancing the geoscience workforce, and in demonstrating that geoscience is fundamental to emerging initiatives such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As part of those advocacy efforts, AGI has undertaken projects to develop a foundation of data that can be used as evidence regarding geoscience education, which has included two reports on the status of preK-12 Earth and Space Science education entitled K-5 Geosciences Education in the United States and Earth and Space Education in U.S. Secondary Schools: Key Indicators and Trends. Last published in 2018, those reports characterize several dimensions of K-12 education—including teacher preparation; curriculum standards; assessment requirements; secondary Earth Science courses in college entry; and others. Those reports will soon be updated and enhanced. This presentation will describe the content of the existing reports, as well as the process used in their development. It will also provide the broad outline of the plan for their upcoming revision. The goal of the presentation is to initiate a conversation throughout the geoscience community regarding the specifics of what the next edition of those reports should include, especially with respect to the indicators that would be most relevant to the challenges preK-12 geoscience educators face today and will face in the foreseeable future. It is intended that in this way the next iteration of these reports will provide data that will be effective with respect to informing discourse and advocacy to promote geoscience education at all levels.