HR: 14:25h
AN: ED13F-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Case Studies of Two American Towns That Have Recently Developed Geotourism Venues: A Comparison of Steps Taken in Geoscience Education Program Development
AU: * Wandersee, J H
EM: jwander@lsu.edu
AF: Louisiana State University, EarthScholars Research Group, LSU Dept.of Curriculum and Instruction, 223-F Peabody Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 United States
AU: Clary, R M
EM: rmclary@cox-internet.com
AF: Louisiana State University, EarthScholars Research Group, LSU Dept.of Curriculum and Instruction, 223-F Peabody Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 United States
AB: In June, 2003, CNN reported that there were three US public fossil parks (in OH, NY, and IA) that embraced educational missions and allowed the public to collect and actually keep the fossils they found. The new parks moved beyond exhibiting fossils to allowing the park visitor to have a direct, tangible, and authentic geobiological field experience, typically culminating in the visitor's identification and ownership of a small number of personally collected fossils. Our site-based, qualitative, comparative geoscience educational analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the first three parks was presented at the 2004 International Geological Congress. We subsequently developed a fossil park design model for others contemplating the establishment or instructional use of such parks. Today there are five specially developed, public fossil parks in the US. All are owned and operated by city or county governments, or by non-profit organizations. Each considers its primary mission to be advancing geoscience education. In the current investigation, we conducted on-site, multiple case study research on the two newest US fossil parks. Both are located in small towns: Trammel Fossil Park in Sharonville, Ohio (population 13,000), and Fossil Beds Park in Fossil, Oregon (population 430). The former site is Ordovician in age, with four fossiliferous marine formations. The latter is an Oligocene lake bed and contains approximately 35 species of identified plant fossils. Our focus in both case studies was on identifying the steps of successful fossil park development that lead to a sound informal geoscience education program, based on principles of active, meaningful, and mindful learning (Langer, 1998; Michael and Modell, 2003; Mintzes, Wandersee, and Novak, 2000). We found that each town had developed a collaborative, community-driven, pedagogically innovative, field-based geotourism venue. Each was noteworthy in specific ways for its geoscience education potential as an outdoor teaching laboratory. We report on the results of actual fossil collecting and interpretation at each site, evaluating the opportunities we found to discover common fossils and to learn geobiology in the field. Our study's findings outline the steps of educational program development and support underlying each park. While one utilizes a very effective interpretive signage system that aims to be self-teaching, the other employs a helpful on-site geological interpreter. In one, following the collapse of the timber industry, the town's entire economic recovery plan is now predicated on geotourism and geoscience education activities centered around its fossil park. In the other, the fossil park has become the enticing geoscience jewel of the town's park system. We think the two different fossil park program development approaches we have elucidated (e.g., Wheeler County Oregon's Paleo Project and Sharonville's university-city-local developer collaboration) could be replicated at other appropriate fossil sites. We also correlated our findings with the new National Research Council study, America's Lab Report (2005), to show that fossil parks can offer scientific experiences to the public that contribute to the nation's scientific literacy.
UR: http://www.EarthScholars.com
DE: 0800 EDUCATION
DE: 0815 Informal education
DE: 0845 Instructional tools
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005