HR: 0800h
AN: ED11C-1111    [Abstracts]
TI: The Earth System Course at the University of Oklahoma: Science and Pedagogy Aimed at Pre-service Teachers
AU: * Postawko, S
EM: spostawk@ou.edu
AF: University of Oklahoma, EVAC 3200 Marshall Ave., Suite 150 , Norman, OK 73072 United States
AU: Soreghan, M
EM: msoreg@ou.edu
AF: University of Oklahoma, School of Geology & Geophysics 100 East Boyd, Suite 810, Norman, OK 73019 United States
AU: Marek, E
EM: eamarek@ou.edu
AF: Unversity of Oklahoma, Lead & Acad Curriculum Ellsworth Collings Hall, Norman, OK 73019 United States
AB: Traditionally, education majors at the University of Oklahoma took either Introduction to Physical Geology or Introduction to Meteorology to fulfill their physical sciences requirement. Science education majors were required to take both courses. These courses are large-enrollment lecture type courses, with required lab sections taught by graduate teaching assistants. Beginning in 1997, faculty from the Colleges of Education and Geosciences at the University of Oklahoma began working together to provide effective earth science education for pre-service teachers. The first step in this collaboration was the development of a new course on The Earth System that focuses on Earth as a whole rather than on the more narrow focus of either the geology or meteorology courses. The new course, which was taught for the first time in the Spring of 2001, covers a number of major themes related to Earth Science, including the Carbon Cycle, Earth Materials, Plate Tectonics, Atmosphere and Oceans. The particular concepts within each theme were chosen based on two criteria: 1) alignment with content advocated by national (NSES) and state (Priority Academic Student Skills-PASS) standards; and 2) they are amenable to a learning cycle pedagogical approach. Besides an interdisciplinary approach to the content, the new course features pedagogical innovations. In lieu of independent laboratory and lecture times, we scheduled two class periods of longer duration, so that active learning, involving hands-on activities and experiments were possible throughout each class period. The activities modeled the learning-cycle approach with an exploration, concept invention, and an expansion phase (Marek and Cavallo, 1997). Therefore, the pre-service teachers experienced the learning cycle in practice prior to learning the theory in their upper division "methods" course. In the first 3 years that the course was taught, students were given surveys early in the semester and at the end of the semester. The surveys aimed to both assess the students' learning and retention (compared to students in the more traditional Introductory Geology course, who were given similar surveys), and solicit the students' opinions of the inquiry-based learning approach compared to more traditional lecture/lab classroom teaching methods.
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design
DE: 0825 Teaching methods
DE: 0830 Teacher training
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005