Teaching the Teachers: Experiential Learning within a Large Earth Science Course using the NGSS Framework

Can making a large intro Earth Science course more experiential actually make pre-service elementary teachers more excited about science? Will they learn more about the Earth and be more comfortable with the idea of teaching science?

Using the framework of the NGSS, we have redesigned an Earth Science course taken by all elementary education majors at UD in an NSF-funded project to address these questions. Year 3 results of this project, titled "The World in a River", will be presented. Earth science concepts and processes emphasized in the NGSS are introduced within the context of the local watershed, with science practices and crosscutting concepts as categorized by the NGSS woven into the course. A quasi-experimental design comparing students before the redesign (2017) with students in the redesigned course (2018 & 2019) is used to evaluate the project. In addition to using the SMQ-II to measure science motivation to learn science, the STEBI-B to measure science teaching self-efficacy, and a modified GCI to measure Earth Science content learning, we have augmented the COPUS to measure time spent on specific NGSS activities and engagement. The team includes one geoscience and two STEM education faculty and an evaluator.

We have incorporated several experiential learning strategies into the redesigned course. These include 1) group activities during "lecture", many based on InTeGrate modules, 2) multiple field trips to the local stream system during lab, 3) a weather project requiring online data mining, 4) a weekend coastal field trip, and most importantly 5) hypothesis driven group research projects on watershed processes, designed by students with field data collected and processed by them, and then presented to the class.

One of the biggest challenges has been the logistics of making this work in a class of 150 students - group activities in a 300 person lecture hall, taking 150 people out in the field, grading. A more unexpected challenge has been the buy-in from students. As geoscientists we tend to assume that field related activities are the most compelling, but this is a required course for students who are already clear on their career path. Not all of them enjoy being out in the field or working with Earth materials. We are working to make the connection between this course and their future classroom teaching clear.