Changes in Geologic Time Understanding in a Class for Preservice Teachers

Abstract

The paradigm of geologic time is built on complex concepts, and students master it in multiple steps. U Concepts in Geology is an inquiry-based geology class for pre-service teachers at Wright State University. The instructors used the Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI) to determine if student understanding of key ideas about geologic time and Earth history changed between the first and last day of the course. For three of the four GCI questions analyzed in this study, the number of correct student responses increased significantly between the pre-test and the post-test, indicating that many of the students were learning the concepts being tested. Our analyses indicates that for two of the GCI questions, certain incorrect pre-test choices were more likely to give way to correct post-test answers than others. For example, on a question about timelines, students who chose the answer that gave a correct order of events (incorrectly scaled) on the pre-test were more likely to switch to the correct answer on the post-test than students who chose an answer with both an incorrect order and scale on the pre-test. These results imply that some misconceptions are more likely than others to grow into a correct understanding. Misconceptions that consist of multiple incorrect ideas may require more time and effort to replace than simpler ones.

How Long Has It Taken for the Physical Landscape to Form? Conceptions of Spanish Pre-Service Teachers

“…Given the results of our study, we suggest that it could be interesting to reinforce fieldwork sessions during compulsory education in order to consolidate the ideas about the formation of the current relief and, more specifically, those ideas related to historical geology. In fact, previous research has demonstrated that fieldwork has a positive impact on the teaching and learning of surficial processes and their effects on landscape formation [29], as other authors have before when they designed a lesson on Earth history, including a field trip and hands-on activities [50].…”

Using analogy to learn about phenomena at scales outside human perception

“…The Geoscience Concept Inventory is a multiple choice assessment instrument of geoscience understanding, which has been validated and is unbiased relative to demographic variables (Libarkin & Anderson, 2006 , 2007 ). The Geoscience Concept Inventory question is commonly used to assess an individual’s understanding of geologic time on a linear scale (for example, Libarkin et al ., 2005 ; Libarkin & Anderson, 2007 ; Petcovic & Ruhf, 2008 ; Teed & Slattery, 2011 ). This item contains five multiple choice response options, shown as five time lines with the same four geologic events in different locations.…”

Learning About Spatial and Temporal Scale: Current Research, Psychological Processes, and Classroom Implications

“…At a more fundamental level, some authors note that confusion about the numbers used in unfamiliar scales (Trend, 1998(Trend, , 2000Teed and Slattery, 2011;Cheek, 2012Cheek, , 2013b can account for some of the errors people make when estimating spatial or temporal magnitude. Learners who have experience with large magnitudes in one context may be able to transfer ideas about the relationship between them to other situations (Cheek, 2016).…”

“…Landscape architecture students who engage in a design task to create an informal space to illustrate geological time improve their knowledge of a timeline of Earth's events from pre-to posttest (Clary et al, 2009). Similarly, preservice teachers enrolled in an undergraduate introductory geoscience course show some gains in their understanding of geological time from the beginning to the end of the course, as measured by several items on the Geoscience Concept Inventory (Teed and Slattery, 2011). Chemistry undergraduates' scores on a magnitude scale literacy instrument and a chemistry content assessment are positively correlated (Gerlach et al, 2014b).…”