New challenges, new relevance, and a new central role

Words I never imagined writing

As I write the introduction to this print issue of the Journal today, I find myself doing so, like virtually everyone else in the country and indeed the world, from my home office. Over the last few weeks and perhaps months, our working reality as university, college and K-12 educators and researchers has changed dramatically. The global COVID-19 pandemic has likely permanently changed the way we work and live, and definitely the way we teach. Where online education in the geosciences was seen as something of an emerging art pioneered and researched by the brave few, suddenly the entire global enterprise of geoscience education has been forced to adapt to unprecedented environmental stresses. We are dealing with abrupt closures of campuses and schools, a massive and sudden shift to online education, and the cancelation and adaptation of field and laboratory education on a scale never before seen. This is likely to impose permanent changes on the way we teach and how we ask students to learn, and our community is going to be pivotal in making this transition work and helping our students and colleagues thrive during this time of intense challenges.

Fortunately, the geoscience education community is well positioned to respond. Over the last decade at least, NAGT members and colleagues have steadily produced what is now a vast array of teaching resources that have been carefully developed, assessed and curated. Most of these have been made available publicly through the Teach the Earth portal and many other related portals at the Science Education Resource Center. These openly available resources are specific to the geosciences and form a collection of a size and scope that is relatively rare across the science education landscape. Our willingness as a community to openly share our innovations distinguishes us and frankly makes me proud to be a contributing member of such a dedicated group of educators. In many universities, particularly in research universities, geoscience education research and scholarship has usually been treated as a good thing to do well and study, but often left as less than central to the core mission of the geoscience departments that house us. We have worked hard to persevere, proving our worth and centrality to the disciplines we love, serve and study. As a result we are now in a position to help meet our collective challenges and play a new central role in plotting the course forward with our colleagues and students.

Articles that have direct relevance

This issue contains five articles selected for their focus on relevant themes that reflect the new challenges of our new teaching and learning situations. These authors did not have crystal balls, but they were working, for years in some cases, steadily researching recurrent themes and issues that have become especially critical to geoscience education today. I am pleased to have the opportunity to present these in print for our community and showcase the relevance of these contributions.

Núñez and coauthors explore diversity and intersectionality, stating, “it is important to recognize the interrelated roles of distinctive social identities in affecting opportunity structures to pursue geosciences.” As our current teaching challenges unfold, the notion of opportunity structures has never been more relevant. Riihimaki and Viskupic report on faculty motivators and inhibitors to change, sharing results of a longitudinal study based in the National Geoscience Faculty Survey which helps us understand why and how faculty respond to societal issues in their teaching. The field is a critical part of geoscience education that is now in a unique state of peril, risk and change. The work presented by Kortz and coauthors uses the framework of Social Cognitive Career Theory to break down the experiences encountered during field research that influence students to persist in the geosciences.

This issue’s cover photo of the Köppen climate classifications across the US is Figure 2 of Davenport and French, who present the development and validation of the new Fundamentals of Meteorology Inventory. This is a valuable step in continuing work in atmospheric sciences education, and will be particularly helpful in measuring the learning outcomes from new and experimental modes of teaching in the geosciences. Hepworth and coauthors continue the focus on atmospheric science education, advancing our understanding of how to teach in mixed-modality online and on-ground classroom settings. This is clearly relevant for us all in this era of online education suddenly sweeping through the geosciences.

Transitions and the road ahead

The stream of geoscience education research coming to the Journal has been simultaneously impressive, gratifying and overwhelming. It is testament to our steadily increasing recognition as a highly rated research journal, and testament to the size and strength of our community. Currently we have a significant backlog of accepted work which is published online but is waiting for a slot in the print journal. We have currently 11 articles remaining in the queue after the publication of this issue, plus there is the Special Theme Issue on Polar Education still in the works that already has 3 articles ready to print. This backlog will fill out most of the balance of volume 68, and we are already looking at acceptances that will run in volume 69. As of today, we have 56 manuscripts in various stages of review and revision. It may be time to think about producing more print issues per year if we can make the numbers work. We are a busy, prolific, and growing community. Keep up the great work!

Finally, I would like to remind all of you that I am serving as Interim Editor-in-Chief, and that we are in the midst of a search for a long-term Editor who can serve for the next five years and take the Journal forward. It is a busy, important, and rewarding role to serve in our community. If you have the vision, energy and professional bandwidth to serve, I’d encourage you to do so. In my short time in this role I have developed a deeper appreciation for the size, scope and impact of our work, so I encourage you to consider taking on this challenge. Applications are due May 1, 2020. For more information please visit https://nagt.org/nagt/jge/editor_search.html. I look forward to working with you to move our community forward through these challenging times.