When There isn't a Right Answer: Interpretation and reasoning, key skills for twenty‐first century geoscience

Abstract

A key challenge in university geoscience teaching is to give students the skills to cope with uncertainty. Professional geoscientists can rarely be certain of the ‘right answer’ to problems posed by most geological datasets, and reasoning through this uncertainty, being intelligently flexible in interpreting data which are limited in resolution and spatial distribution, is an important skill for students to learn. Understanding how interpretative and reasoning skills are, or might better be, developed alongside foundational geological concepts and techniques is crucial for the effective training of our future geoscientists. In the study presented here, a seismic interpretation exercise was undertaken by 36 geoscientists ranging in experience from novice to expert. During the exercise, observations were made of the approaches taken by the participants, what we term the interpretational process, and an evaluation was made of what they actually accomplished, what we term the final interpretational outcomes. From a comparison of the different experience cohorts, we show that even as a novice it is important to develop geological reasoning skills to enhance the interpretation of datasets where there is indeed no ‘right answer’.

Keywords:

• Argumentation
• Conceptual development
• Earth science education
• Reasoning
• Uncertainty
• University
• Vocational education

Acknowledgements

The participants, universities, and companies involved are thanked for their input into this research. The research was funded by an RGS‐IBG and EPSRC small grant to CEB. GXTechnology are thanked for creating synthetic seismic images for use. Jo Norcup is thanked for help with running and observing the interpretation exercises. This paper was significantly improved by the suggestions of two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. This sense of there being a ‘right answer’ here is purely an artifice of our methodology for producing seismic images to deploy in our exercises; it is not meant as a closet smuggling in of ‘rightness’ through the back door.

2. The penultimate and the final year undergraduate students gave up their own time to participate in the exercise. This self‐selection may mean that the diversity of skills within a student year group is not fully represented in the cohort, but since we are not comparing the results directly with data from other student groups this is not an issue. In general, the study reveals most about the contrasts between how the different experience cohorts approached the overall exercise.