Helen King’s Blog

As a first step in researching Threshold Concepts in the Geosciences, I have been undertaking a pilot project to investigate ’sticking points’ or ‘troublesome concepts’ with a focus on first year, introductory courses.

Working with colleagues at the Universities of Plymouth (UK), Colorado (USA) and Calgary (Canada) I ran an online questionnaire with students and faculty to gather a list of areas where students find difficulty. I also asked what concepts, if any, had transformed the way they viewed the world. I then followed this up with face-to-face interviews to validate their written responses and explore the questions in futher depth.

I also conducted a literature review to see what other ‘barriers to learning’ models might be appropriate. There seem to be two main categories of models: 1) identifiying ‘what’ might be troublesome (this includes ‘critical barriers’ and ‘threshold concepts’) and 2) suggesting ‘why’ things might be troublesome (e.g. alternative conceptions, cognitive / conceptual development, teaching practice, student motivation). In order to keep things manageable, I maintained a focus on cognitive models (rather than issues of teaching practice, learning environment or student motivation for example). Of course, all these things interact in a complex way but for the purposes of this small-scale project it was necessary to try and simplify my investigations.

I have taken a grounded theory approach, that is I’ve tried not to have any preconceptions about what difficulties might be identified. I want these things to become apparent from the data. One of my main difficulties then, is to try and be objective - I have a lot of ideas from my personal experience of learning geoscience and I need to ensure that these don’t colour my interpretation of the data. To help with this, a non-geoscience colleague will do a second coding of the data.

I’ve now finished all the interviews and need to transcribe them before embarking on the data analysis. I am submitting an abstract to a special GSA publication on qualitative research; if it is accepted I will need to write a paper by the end of October - so I’ve got a reasonably tight schedule to work to!

This workshop was held at Carleton College, in Northfield, MN, in November, 2008. It involved geoscience faculty together with cognitive scientists, education psychologists and faculty from other disciplines to discuss the role and integration of metacognition in teaching geoscience.

It was an intense, interesting and rewarding 3 days with some excellent presentations and insightful discussion (see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/metacognition/workshop08/index.html for more info). Of particular benefit to me was the opportunity to meet people with similar research interests. The last long session of the workshop allowed cognate groups to meet and plan activities. I met with Dave Mogk, Mimi Fuhrman and Thomas Brown to discuss possible research strategies. We felt that there was a need to elucidate and articulate ‘ways of thinking and knowing’ in the geosciences, i.e. to explore how geoscientists think in order to better support students in their journey from novice to expert (see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/metacognition/working_groups/research_project_geoscience_habits.html).

We hope to develop a formal research proposal with a view to seeking funding for this activity. This links in directly with my own personal interest in the ‘Nature of Geoscience’ so I hope to follow this up soon!

More info and resources on metacognition in Geoscience can be found at:

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/metacognition/index.html

 This week I attended the second of a series of two workshop on Linking Evidence and Promising Practices in Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education. To quote the workshop description “Numerous varied teaching, learning, assessment and institutional innovations in undergraduate STEM education have been developed in recent years - many funded by NFS - but little is known about their impact. The goal of this project is to begin to focus on the evidence of impact for a selected number of such promising practices. To do this the National Research Council (NRC) is facilitating two, one-day workshops overseen by an independent steering committee. Each workshop will shed light on the state of knowledge on the selected STEM practices as well as suggest areas for additional research or where major synthesis of existing research is needed. This work will be coordinated with and provide information and guidance to an NSF funded project [Mobilizing STEM Education for a Sustainable Future] at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER).” (http://mobilizingstem.wceruw.org).

This workshop focused on examples of active learning, concept inventories, structure of the learning environment, undergraduate research, faculty development and dissemination. Details of the workshop including papers and presentations can be found at http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bose/PP_Agenda_October13and14_2008.html

As well as hearing about the ‘promising practices’ and learning more about discipline-based faculty development in the US (see list of examples below) I also made some useful contacts including with the American Geological Institute (based just up the road in Alexandria).

Workshop for New Faculty in Physics & Astronomy: http://www.aapt.org/Events/newfaculty.cfm

Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science Teaching (FIRST II): http://www.first2.org/ 
FIRST II is a national dissemination network that provides long-term professional development for life science faculty in teaching and learning.

On the Cutting Edge: Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/index.html

248 Geoscience Education (Posters)
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4859.html

258 Geoscience Education I: Learning Geoscience in the Outdoor Classroom
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4856.html
311 Geoscience Education III: Research on Learning in the Geosciences
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4858.html

T11. Global Warming Science: Implications for Geoscientists, Educators, and Policy Makers I
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4924.html

T11. Global Warming Science: Implications for Geoscientists, Educators, and Policy Makers II
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session5034.html

T110. Analog Sites and Field Exercises for Training Planetary Field Geologists
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4962.html

T172. Outdoor Classrooms for Water Resources Education
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session5015.html

T174. Teaching and Learning about Complex Earth Systems: Effective Strategies in Undergraduate Classrooms and Teacher Development Programs
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4953.html

T174. Teaching and Learning about Complex Earth Systems: Effective Strategies in Undergraduate Classrooms and Teacher Development Programs (Posters)
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session5049.html

T175. What Should Students be Learning in Our Geology Classrooms?
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4967.html

T176. The Human Connection with Planet Earth: What is it and Why is it Important?
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4995.html

T177. Disseminating Hands-on Geological Knowledge and Creating a Greater Awareness for the Environment: Emphasis on the Involvement of Undergraduates and K–12 Students (Posters)
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4931.html

T179. Geocognition: Researching Student Learning in the Geosciences
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4954.html

T182. Teaching Petrology and Structural Geology in the 21st Century
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4922.html

T182. Teaching Petrology and Structural Geology in the 21st Century (Posters)
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session5029.html

T185. Teaching with New Tools: Visualizations, Models, Online Data, Games, and More (Posters)
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4951.html

T187. Research on Geoscience Teaching and Learning in Experiential Environments
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4945.html

T192. Professional Society, Organization, Institution, and Federal Agency Achievements Supporting K–12 Teachers and Students
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4905.html

T206. Geoscience Diversity 2008: Status, Strategies, and Successful Models I
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session4902.html

T206. Geoscience Diversity 2008: Status, Strategies, and Successful Models II
http://a-c-s.confex.com/crops/2008am/webprogram/Session5054.html

Spent Wednesday morning visiting the exhibits and trawling for freebies (excellent Christmas stocking fillers!), then sat in the Geoscience Education III session all afternoon. Alison Stokes (University of Plymouth) kicked off with a really interesting talk on the student experience of fieldwork presenting evidence from quantitative and qualitative data. Other highlights included Brett Gilley (University of British Columbia) discussed how earth and ocean courses affect student attitudes to science and Kelley Gilliard offered some useful guidelines for successful online geoscience courses.

I’ll post a full list of the education sessions (with links to the abstracts) at the weekend.

 On Thursday Brett, Andrea, Leilani and I took a trip to the Johnson Space Center and had great fun playing with the infrared camera and other gadgets. The highlight had to be seeing the original mission control.

A really busy day today! Started with the 5k ‘fun’ run at Buffalo Bayou park. Even at 0630 it was really hot and humid, just jogging the mile to the start line left me dripping with sweat (nice). Fortunately I’d had some water with Nuun (an electrolyte drink) before so I didn’t suffer from dehydration but the race was really heavy going. There were 200 of us out there braving the elements and I managed to stagger my way to third in my age category - my first ever medal (not including medals for finishing)! Ran with Sian Davis-Vollum (from the University of Washington at Tacoma) who I met a few weeks ago on the GeoTour. Must keep in contact!

Walked back to the hotel in torential rain then grabbed the hotel shuttle to the convention centre for the session on “Research on Geoscience Teaching and Learning in Experiential Environments” chaired by Eric Riggs and Joe Elkins. After lunch it was time for the Geocognition session chaired by me, Alison Stokes and Anthony Feig. I discussed the proposal for geocognition to be recognised as a sub-discipline of geoscience. The other presentations discussed some really interesting research including Heather Petcovic’s work with preservice elementary teachers which recognised that students need multiple opportunites and  multiple learning modes to develop a good understanding of a concept. Julie Sexton discussed college students’ conceptions of canyon formation and noted that they use their incoming conceptions as a lens through which to view new topics.
Cathy Manduca outlined the work of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (http://www.spatialintelligence.org), an NSF-funded project with a community mandate. Geoscience topics include charaterizing geoscience spatial expertise, understanding geoscience spatial learning, and developing materials. Katrien Kraft discussed the role of metacognition in developing content understanding and conceptual change. Kim Kastens outlined the synthesis of research on learning being developed (see http://serc.carleton.edu/research_on_learning/synthesis/index.html); this covers geological time, complex systems of the earth, spatial thinking in geosciences and field-based learning.
Karen Kortz discussed students’ conceptions of rocks and rock formation, suggesting they have difficulties with deep time, atomic scale, large spatial scales, changing Earth, bedrock, materials, pressure, and many students do not view rocks as part of larger processes. Finally, Julie Libarkin discussed the relationship between confidence and conceptual understanding, linking in with Ed Nuhfer’s work on Knowledge Surveys.

After the Geocognition session I moved down to the exhibit hall to lurk around my poster on Researching Threshold Concepts in the Geosciences; this received a lot of interest and I’m now hoping that the pilot project on identifiying students’ ’sticking points’ will cover participants from the UK (Plymouth), Canada (Calgary) and the USA (Colorado).

After the Geocognition & Geoscience Education Researchers interest group meeting, the evening was spent catching up on the latest news from Heather Petcovic and Julie Libakin’s NSF-funded project on the novice-expert continuum (I am on the advisory board). Finished off with dinner at a Japanese restaurant.

Had a relatively quiet morning browsing geoscience education posters. Read about some interesting ideas including involving graduate students in middle / high school teaching (useful for comparison with the UKs’ various ambassador programmes), and research on students’ misconceptions and difficulties with learning geoscience (very useful in relation to my proposed ’sticking points’ research.
The afternoon’s session was entitled ”What should students be learning in our geology classrooms?” chaired by Dexter Perkins and Karl Wirth. Interestingly the main focus of many of presentations was on higher order thinking (reflection, intentional learning, critical thinking, metacognition) rather than specific topics in geoscience. Many presenters also advocated teaching broad concepts (particularly early in the undergraduate curriculum) rather than fine detail / terminology. In their talks, Dexter and Kirth both discussed the notion of intentional learners and metacognition - and this is to be the topic of the next ‘Cutting Edge Workshop’ at Carleton College in November (http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/metacognition/workshop08/index.html). 
Mickey Gunter outlined his Mineralogy Text Book (http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/DGTtxt/) and showed screenshots from the accompanying DVD which holds a detailed database of minerals. The final presentation of the day, from Elizabeth Goeke at the Universityof Pittsburgh, illustrated a great assessment idea; getting students to critically review (from a geoscience perspective) the depiction of volcanoes in a movie, tv programme or cartoon of their choice. Summarising the theme of the afternoon she said “I don’t care if, in two years time, they can’t tell me the viscosity of lava but I do care that they can take knowledge from science and apply it to daily life.”

Started the morning with a run through the Buffalo Bayou park, then headed off to the first session on ‘Perspectives on the Emerging Workforce Crisis in Geology’. There were a few interesting talks - my favourite quote was from an engineering employer: “I want [recruits] to be well-educated; I’ll do the training.” It was encouraging to hear that not all employers want ‘oven-ready’ graduates.  Cathy Manduca talked about the SERC workshops which discussed the future of geoscience departments. There’s some interesting information on skills development and professional preparation on the webpages at http://serc.carleton.edu/departments

The NAGT  / GSA Education Divison awards luncheon provided good food (though it was odd eating lunch at 1130) and some interesting data. Education is the 5th largest division of GSA and at this conference 239 abstracts are included in 11 sessions, making it the 3rd largest at the event.

A few interesting presentations in the afternoon including student perceptions of global change through time; a conceptual method for teaching and learning dynamic processes; and a description of ‘lecture-tutorials’. Went out for dinner in the evening to a fantastic Indian. Met Iris Totten (Kansas State) who’s developed an island on Second Life where students can go back in (geological) time to see ancient environmental systems and processes.

Went to a great workshop today run by Julie Libarkin (Michigan State) and Steve Anderson (North Colorado) on writing questions for the Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI: http://newton.bhsu.edu/eps/gci.html). The GCI is an excellent tool which has been rigorously developed over several years. Met Karen Kortz (Community College of Rhode Island) who’s doing a geoscience education PhD and has been looking at student conceptions of rocks (she was interested in our Threshold Concepts research for which her work seem really relevant).

 We went straight on from the workshop to the Geoscience Educator’s reception where we met with friends old and new including Anthony Feig (Central Michigan) who’s presenting on phenomenology and Brett Gilley (University of British Columbia) who’s looking at student attitudes to geoscience (pre- and post-introductory courses).

Arrived safely in Houston for the 2008 annual Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting. Met up with Alison Stokes (EL CETL) yesterday afternoon at the airport and made our way to our downtown hotel. Spent the day wondering around the downtown area, checking out the convention center and local eateries. Was very impressed by how pedestrian-friendly the place is as well as the availability of vegetarian food. Took the Metrorail to the museum district and visited the Houston Museum of Natural History; they had a great fossil collection and an amazing gem & minerals collection. Wended our way back to the hotel, admiring the metagranite facias on the way. A pleasantly relaxed day before the conference begins in earnest tomorrow.