INTEGRATING EARTH SCIENCE CORE CONCEPTS INTO PHYSICAL AND LIFE SCIENCE CLASSES

The challenge to truly integrate Earth Science Core Concepts (ESCC) into physical and life science classes can be met by explicitly building the Earth Science content on the principles already taught in those classes. While leading a series of workshops for experienced, in-service teachers of physics, chemistry and biology, we identified three primary obstacles to the successful teaching of the Earth Science Core Concepts: 1. not having a full or accurate understanding of the ESCC; 2. being unfamiliar with useful exercises for engaging with and exploring the ESCC; 3. not truly integrating ESCC into their core curriculum and introducing seemingly unconnected ESCC as standalone units. Herein, we focus on the third obstacle, and how addressing that issue can help with obstacles 1 and 2.

It is critical that units on ESCC do not appear without context as something unrelated to the rest of the class. This intrinsically weakens the learning experience and unintentionally implies to students that ESCC are not part of the main course content. Core concepts of the physical and life sciences must be directly linked to ESCC. For example, the fundamental physics concepts of density, force, kinetic and potential energy, conservation and conversion of energy are used to understand mantle and ocean convection, plate tectonics, faulting and earthquakes, landslides, and the Sun’s drive of the ocean-atmosphere-climate system. The chemical concepts of isotopes and radioactive decay, phase changes, latent and sensible heat, oxidation and reduction reactions are used to understand Earth’s age, mantle convection, circulation of the ocean and atmosphere, the greenhouse effect and climate change through time. Finally, the biological concepts and processes of evolution, ecosystems, biodiversity, photosynthesis, essential nutrients and metabolites are used to understand the fossil record, biosphere, the carbon cycle, and the interaction of life with Earth’s ocean and atmospheric chemistry.

Circling back to obstacles 1 and 2, landslides and earthquakes provide real-world, life-impacting examples of conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy and momentum. Learning about the triggers and mechanisms of prehistoric climate-change and extinction events strengthens the understanding of how the environment impacts the biosphere and vice versa, in the past, present, and future.