WHY SHOULD I LEARN THIS? IMPROVING GEOSCIENCE KNOWLEDGE BY EMPHASIZING ITS RELEVANCE IN AN OUT-OF-SCHOOL PROGRAM

Informal STEM experiences, including in geoscience, can help children from underrepresented groups better understand how STEM is relevant to their lives, families, and communities. Engaging geoscience instruction focused on local processes and their impacts targeted to upper elementary-aged children has the potential to improve their interest and achievement. This is important because many students from underrepresented groups start to experience disinterest in STEM as they transition to middle school. Without high quality instruction that emphasizes the real-world relevance of what they are learning, students are at even greater risk of disengaging from STEM when transitioning to middle and high school. Because many K-12 schools follow rigid curriculum maps, out-of-school programs can fill in the gap to improve learning, self-efficacy, and motivation by helping students see how geoscience is relevant to their lives.

This session describes the results of an out-of-school geoscience education program with 4^th and 5^th graders at two urban elementary schools. Students engaged in authentic geoscience and engineering activities investigating how wind, fluvial, and coastal processes impact the local landscape and infrastructure. After each investigation, students reflected on the relevance of what they learned to their lives, families, and communities. Students completed pre/post assessments for geoscience concept knowledge and perceived relevance of their learning. While this was a mixed methods study, we only report quantitative data here. Across both schools, students showed learning gains in their conceptual understanding of geoscience processes. While there were no significant gains in the perceived relevance of geoscience across both schools, students at one school showed marginal gains in the perceived relevance of geoscience. However, students at the other school did not show the same growth, likely because they rated the relevance of geoscience relatively high on the pre-assessment. Implications for practitioners and researchers will be discussed.