Earth Educators’ Rendezvous

Last month, I attended the Earth Educators’ Rendezvous in Albuquerque where I participated in the Geoscience Education Research and Practice Forum. Approximately 40 geoscience educators and researchers gathered for four days to prioritize grand challenges in geoscience education research and recommend strategies for addressing the priorities.

Both in small working groups and large group feedback forums, we discussed research on students’ understanding in geology, and environmental, ocean, atmospheric, and climate science; research on K-12 teacher education; Earth and societal problems; access to underrepresented groups; cognitive science unique to geoscience (e.g., quantitative reasoning, temporal reasoning, spatial reasoning); instructional strategies to improve learning; and research on institutional change.

In the evenings to clear my mind, I took to the hills—literally—and was amazed by the local geologic landforms!

Amy Pallant at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument.
The cone-shaped tent rock formations are the products of volcanic eruptions that occurred 6 to 7 million years ago and left pumice, ash, and tuff deposits over 1000 feet thick.

Basalt cobbles at Petroglyphs National Monument created by a lava flow around a hill (that has since eroded).

Back at the meeting, I was in the working group focused on research on instructional strategies to improve geoscience learning in different settings and with various technologies. Because this topic is so broad, developing a list of grand challenges brought up a wide range of ideas. In the end, we narrowed our list to six grand challenges and began to outline strategies to address them.

The ideas developed will be presented at AGU and AGI this fall, and members of each group will be writing white papers. I’m hopeful that the product of this work will be like the influential Earth and Mind II, with the geoscience education research field and educators benefiting similarly.

The Earth Educators’ Rendezvous and the nearby landscapes were both inspiring. No wonder they call New Mexico the land of enchantment.