Enhancing Geoscience Education Within a Minority-Serving Preservice Teacher Population

Abstract

The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics and Huston-Tillotson University collaborated on a proof of concept project to offer a geoscience course to undergraduate students and preservice teachers in order to expand the scope of geoscience education within the local minority student and teacher population. Students were exposed to rigorous Earth science materials, geoscientists conducting cutting-edge research, headliner topics, and pedagogical approaches to teaching. An evaluation of the data reveal that the course received mixed, but overall positive reviews and that student performance was mixed. Pre-and posttest results indicate that students made only modest gains. Half of the students performed at levels that matched our expectations and will be able to apply the geoscience knowledge and skills that they learned in an elementary school setting. The course contributed to the preparation of minority teachers to teach Earth science in Texas, filling a critical need. The authors, in collaboration with a minority-serving institution and as part of the preparation for a preservice teacher program, benefited from the experience; they subsequently applied the lessons learned to a program of professional development for minority-serving science teachers, the

The Texas Earth and Space Science (TXESS) Revolution: A Model for the Delivery of Earth Science Professional Development to Minority-Serving Teachers

“…Many of the instructional materials had been developed and tested previously by two of the authors with prior NSF and Texas Education Agency funding (Ellins and Olson, 2000;Ellins et al, 2002;Ellins and Olson, 2012). Additional high-quality materials that use real data came from TERC, the Science Education Resource Center (SERC), Antarctic Geological Drilling (ANDRILL), Ridge 2000, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), UNAVCO, the Consortium for Ocean Leadership's Deep Earth Academy, and Windows to the Universe.…”