This working group aims to represent geoscience education researchers. The vision for our working group is to represent and support these researchers and expand the visibility of geoscience education research in the AGU community.
What is Geoscience Education Research? There is a spectrum to what the community means by Geoscience Education Research, or "GER" for short. Here, we take an inclusive approach to the work included in the GER community. Broadly, we define GER as the systematic investigation of the learning, teaching, or doing geoscience that produces evidence to inform theory.
Current projects:
- Co-convening, with the NAGT-GER Division, a geoscience education research session at each AGU Fall meeting. We are in the second year of implementing this strategy, and have expanded the session into 3 parts in 2022.
- Organizing and hosting geoscience education research-related online programing throughout the year (i.e., outside of the AGU fall meeting). These may include webinars, workshops, and/or round table discussions. Some topics will be designed primarily for those new to geoscience education research (e.g., differentiating between project evaluation vs research). Other topics will be designed for active geoscience education researchers (e.g., adopting FAIR and Open Science data management practices).
Recommended resources:
- Where can I go as a starting point to learn about geoscience education research? Visit the Geoscience Education Researcher Toolbox. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the GER community collaboratively developed a toolbox of resources to help faculty start or improve how they do research on geoscience teaching and learning. The Toolbox begins with a section on the basics and development of GER with an introductory resource reading list. The other main sections of the Toolbox provide resources and advice on: Instruments and Surveys, Analytical Tools, Conducting GER Studies Across Institutions, Navigating a Career in GER, Getting Published, and Translating Results into Practice.
- What is the Geoscience Education Research Community of Practice? A community of practice is a group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or an interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals. These essays/papers describe the GER Community of Practice––its history, evolution, and ideas on ways those new to GER could engage/connect further with others in GER: Lukes et al 2015; Kastens, 2016; and Manduca and Kastens 2018.
- What are future directions for geoscience education research? Visit A Community Framework for GER. In order to guide future investments of time and resources in GER, the community developed a framework in 2018 with NSF support of grand challenges across ten major themes in GER. These grand challenges can provide direction to current and future researchers about where the community thinks effort should be made to answer some fundamental questions about undergraduate geoscience teaching and learning.
- How can integrated, coordinated, open, and networked (ICON) principles be infused in Geoscience Education Research? This question is explored and recommendations are made for the GER community in Section 3 of the 2022 commentary: Geoscience Education Perspectives on Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) Science.
- Geoscience education Research can involve both the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and Discipline based Education Research (DBER), but what are these two related fields? A Columbia University guide for faculty helps differentiate SoTL vs DBER.
This is a new working group and we welcome your ideas, questions, and broader participation! Contact: Kristen St John (stjohnke@jmu.edu ) or Laura Lukes (laura.lukes@ubc.ca).