The papers published in JGE share ideas and research about an incredible range of ways to engage students. In this issue, Nicole LaDue and coauthors combine geoscientists’ discipline-based perspectives on active learning with theory from psychology to propose a model for thinking about and researching different types of engagement. Their model includes four dimensions: behavioral, emotional, cognitive (whether students learn better), and agentic (whether students make decisions), which can be combined in many ways. They put commonly used protocols for observing what happens in a classroom into their framework, and propose ways to evaluate various types of student engagement. Their framework was an "ah-ha!" moment for me, and helps me think about many of the other papers that we publish.
The C&I papers in this issue share innovative ways to engage students. The first two papers involve educational board games. Wendy Robertson describes a hydrologic cycle game for undergraduate courses, while Estefanía Salgado-Jauregui and coauthors adapted "Taphonomy: Dead or Alive" (originally designed for college students) to be used by high school students. A third paper, by Erik Haroldson, uses games from improv theater in undergraduate mineralogy and petrology courses. Erin Kraal and coauthors have their students create audio narratives (podcasts) in introductory courses, giving students a sense of innovation and personal relevance (aspects of emotional and agentic engagement). Finally, Ankun Ma and coauthors incorporated Earth Science into an environmental education course for pre-service and in-service teachers in British Columbia. The place-based learning that occurred is an example of what LaDue and coauthors would call emotional and cognitive engagement.
In one of this issue’s research papers, Nicole James and coauthors tested a technique to make clicker-based activities (behavioral engagement) more effective for learning, self-efficacy, and interest (cognitive and emotional engagement). These predict-observe-explain activities are more effective at engaging students than clicker activities that only involve discussion.
The last two research papers in this issue deal with images. Caitlin Kirby and coauthors asked geoscientists at a national conference to draw a picture that explains "the process of natural selection". They found that, although the geoscientists did well on multiple choice questions about evolution, their drawings left out some important concepts. Dominik Conrad and Julie Libarkin used Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Model of Educational Reconstruction to analyze US and German student explanations of tectonic concepts, along with the images that illustrate tectonic concepts in US and German textbooks. They recommend using the concept of image schemas when designing textbook images, to avoid inadvertently encouraging the development of misconceptions.
Finally, we are saddened by the recent passing of JGE Associate Editor Anne-Marie Ryan. Anne-Marie was a University Teaching Fellow in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Dalhousie University, and an inspirational teacher, supportive mentor, extraordinary colleague, and thoughtful friend. We valued her contributions to JGE.
Department of Geosciences, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado, USA
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