ongoing educational anomaly of Earth Science Placement, The

Journal of Geoscience Education, Sep 2003 by Messina, Paula, Speranza, Paul, Metzger, Ellen P, Stoffer, Phil

ABSTRACT

The geosciences have traditionally been viewed with less "academic prestige" than other science curricula. Among the results of this perception are depressed K-16 enrollments, Earth Science assignments to lowerperforming students, and relegation of these classes to sometimes under-qualified educators, all of which serve to confirm the widely-held misconceptions. An Earth Systems course developed at San Jose State University demonstrates the difficulty of a standard high school Earth science curriculum, while recognizing the deficiencies in pre-college Earth science education. Restructuring pre-college science curricula so that Earth Science is placed as a capstone course would greatly improve student understanding of the geosciences, while development of Earth systems courses that infuse real-world and hands-on learning at the college level is critical to bridging the information gap for those with no prior exposure to the Earth sciences. Well-crafted workshops for pre-service and inservice teachers of Earth Science can help to reverse the trends and unfortunate "status" in geoscience education.

Keywords: Earth Systems Science; Education Precollege; Education - Teacher education; Education - Undergraduate

INTRODUCTION

The reputation of the geosciences as a "Rocks for Jocks" curriculum has long permeated K-12 districts and college campuses. In undergraduate programs, Geology has sometimes been viewed as a more accessible sciencerequirement-satisfying option for non-science majors. On the secondary level, earth science has been a course traditionally offered to non-college-bound populations, as an alternative to the more "academic" track including Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.

Despite the National Science Education Standards' call for Earth Science to be taught at each K-12 grade level (NRC, 1996), Earth Science is increasingly relegated to earlier grades, thus allowing college-bound high school students to take at least one Advanced Placement class in their senior year in lieu of any earth science at all. In California, for example, Earth Science is last taught as a comprehensive course in the sixth grade. While elements of the geosciences are incorporated into later Integrated Science curricula, it is not atypical for California's youngsters to obtain their only exposure to the breadth of earth science in their first year of middle school: and this is in a state where earthquake preparedness is a required topic throughout one's public education. In New York State, where the Board of Regents has maintained statewide standards by requiring exit exams in all high school-level curricula, Earth Science has been relegated increasingly to middle schools.

Earth Science is neither a topic for slow learners nor for young learners. This conclusion was never as apparent to these authors as during the course of an unintentional, unplanned "experiment," in which what is effectively a high school syllabus in Earth Science was taught to groups of upper division undergraduates at San Jose State University.

THE EARTH SYSTEMS APPROACH

Geology 103, Earth Systems Science, is a course that was developed by Prof. Ellen Metzger in 2000 at the request of the Director of the Program in Science Education. It was recommended that SJSU's pre-credential and inservice teachers would greatly benefit by having a comprehensive course in which earth science would be explored in depth. While the curriculum was initially designed to satisfy the needs of secondary science teachers, Geology 103 was recently mandated for all students enrolled in the university's multiple-subject credential program, since it satisfies content and pedagogy requirements as deemed necessary by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). As such, the curriculum also awards General Education credit (thus fulfilling part of university-wide graduation requirements) to keep the prospective teachers' bachelor's degrees within an acceptable credit range.

The course was piloted in spring 2001, and has been taught since then by either Ellen Metzger or Paula Messina, both joint appointees of SJSU's Geology Department and Program in Science Education. Dr. Metzger brings to this course over a decade of experience as co-director of the Bay Area Earth Science Institute (BAESI), an SJSU-based program funded by the National Science Foundation, SJSU, Chevron Texaco Corporation, and other community partners, which has served over 1,100 Bay Area teachers in summer and Saturday workshops. Many of the BAESI teachers indicate that their motivation for participation correlates to the increasing expectation for them to teach Earth Science with little or no prior coursework in the subject. The opportunity to work with pre-college teachers has influenced Metzger's own teaching and she now incorporates more active learning strategies in her own classes, including Geology 103. Prior to her appointment at SJSU, Dr. Messina taught high school Earth Science to middle- and high-school students in New York City. For most of her twenty-year K-12 teaching career Dr. Messina taught the New York State Regents syllabus in Earth Science, which was offered in her school predominantly to "gifted" freshmen and to juniors who were deemed "under-qualified" to succeed in Chemistry.