VISUALIZATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF COMPLEX GEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS, PRINCIPLES, RELATIONSHIPS, AND TIMING THROUGH LOCAL LEARNING

Students are more engaged in their learning when relevant contexts within their own lives and environments are framed or used, and even greater when this occurs in their local landscapes and supports their individual learning styles. Teachers are not geologic experts and often lack time to create local curriculum resources, with their teaching practices commonly using textbooks, online learning, and resources. These are widely not locally focussed, causing the situation where many schools currently lack local place-based curriculum, especially in Earth sciences.

Christchurch is New Zealand’s second-largest city, with the amazing geologic landscape of Banks Peninsula on its doorstep. This provides the perfect location to develop place-based geologic education that promotes localized learning and geologic interest among students while supporting educators. This study developed a 5-step geologic learning module, examining the geological origins of the peninsula through maps. Activities build upon the fundamentals of better education, where students learn and understand better within a scaffolded learning structure, as each activity builds off skills learned. Although building off each other, activities maintain a non-repetitive format and vary in structure. Mixed learning focuses are used, helping support students of all learning styles, and are designed to aid content engagement as a primary focus point.