PHENOMENAL PHENOMENA: USING INQUIRY-BASED CURRICULUM IN HIGH SCHOOL EARTH SCIENCE CLASSROOMS INSPIRED BY REAL DATA

The K-12 education system has undergone innovative changes over the past decade to attempt to better prepare high school graduates for succeeding in scientific careers, both academic and professional. With a turn towards Science and Engineering Practices within the Next Generation Science Standards, teachers have the opportunity to focus on developing skills rather than recited content, and many have turned toward inquiry-based learning as a way to develop many of those skills. Inquiry-based learning and labs in the high school setting encourage students to collaborate with their peers, develop working models to understand phenomena in the natural world, and communicate their reasoning using key evidence. Inspired by the inquiry-based biology curriculum developed at the UC Davis School of Education, we have created projects and labs for earth science students based on observable phenomena that students can use to explore the world around them.

Though many schools in California have been migrating to inquiry-based curriculum, geoscience classes at the high school level are typically still using more traditional teaching approaches and may give the false impression that geoscience is not as intellectually rigorous as biology, chemistry, and physics. It is our goal to encourage more K-12 teachers to incorporate these types of inquiry activities into their curriculum, regardless of what they teach, but especially those who have the opportunity to teach a true earth science course.

It is our belief that helping students build inquiry and critical thinking skills at a high school level will not only encourage them to pursue geoscience majors in a higher education setting, but will set them up to excel in those settings.