The Effect of Using Inquiry and Multiple Representations on Introductory Geology Students' Conceptual Model Development of Coastal Eutrophication

McNeal, Karen S.; Miller, Heather; Herbert, Bruce

doi:10.5408/1089-9995-56.3.201

Cited by 22 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…All types of faculty-education-, research-, and teaching-focused-are increasingly attending teaching seminars and workshops to enhance their instruction (Manduca et al, 2017). Encouragingly, many undergraduate students do experience some SMST (Forbes et al, 2018;Gunn, Mohtar, & Engel, 2002;McNeal, Miller, & Herbert, 2008;Williams, Lansey, & Washburne, 2009), but introductory geoscience courses do not tend to incorporate SMST; instead, students receive exposure to SMST in other courses (Macdonald et al, 2005). SMST skills encourage students to think about relationships between interacting components and the ability to demonstrate what those components and interactions look like (Baumfalk et al, in press;Bawden et al, 1984;Danish, et al, 2017;Schwarz et al, 2009;Troy et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As recently as the 2012 implementation of the National Geoscience Faculty Survey, 49% of instructors were implementing lecture for 80% of course time (Manduca et al, 2017). The accomplishment of converting time from lecture to SMST and other student-centered teaching strategies is a worthwhile investment in terms of student participation and learning (McNeal, Miller, & Herbert, 2008;Mosher, et al, 2014). Making the shift from lecture to studentcentered instruction is important to meeting the goal of high-quality teaching and meaningful learning (Manduca, et al, 2017), including SMST.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are several concrete ways instructors can help students develop systems thinking skills. Spending time discussing not only the mechanisms and patterns surrounding components but also the scale of certain features helps students make systems thinking connections (Hmelo-Silver et al, 2017;McNeal, Miller, & Herbert, 2008). Sometimes it is difficult for students to conceptualize how all of the components of a system might be connected or the ways in which seemingly disparate components are connected, including in the geosciences (Macdonald, Manduca, Mogk, & Tewksbury, 2005).…”

Section: Scientific Modeling and Systems Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

National Survey of Geoscience Teaching Practices 2016: Current Trends in Geoscience Instruction of Scientific Modeling and Systems Thinking

Lally¹,

Forbes²,

McNeal³

et al. 2018

Geological Society of America Abstracts With Programs

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Scientific modeling and systems thinking (SMST) is central to the geosciences, yet few studies have documented how and to what extent undergraduate geoscience courses emphasize SMST, as well as factors that might help explain or predict these trends. Here, we present research based on data (n ¼ 2056) from the most recent (2016) administration of the National Geoscience Faculty Survey, administered to a national sample of postsecondary geoscience instructors in the United States. We investigated instructor-and course-related variables as they relate to a set of 9 survey items that serve as a composite measure for SMST. Significant variation was observed in reported frequencies of individual SMST practices in undergraduate geoscience courses. The highest levels of reported SMST were associated with faculty from atmospheric and environmental sciences, those who emphasized research-based, studentcentered pedagogical practices, those who recently made changes to both course content and teaching methods, and those who reported high levels of engagement in instructional improvement activities (workshops, presentations, seminars). Reported SMST practices were similar for faculty identifying as geoscientists and geoscience education researchers, and both were significantly higher than for teaching-focused faculty who do not conduct research. A linear regression model including variables found to be significant in the analyses was able to predict 17% of the overall variance in reported SMST practices. These findings illustrate the importance of instructors' disciplinary orientation and active engagement in instructional innovation as related to SMST, and provide important points of impact for enhancing SMST in undergraduate geoscience courses through course design and faculty development. However, the relatively modest predictive power of the regression model indicates there are many other factors influencing SMST that warrant future research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Scientific Modeling and Systems Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

National Survey of Geoscience Teaching Practices 2016: Current Trends in Geoscience Instruction of Scientific Modeling and Systems Thinking

Lally¹,

Forbes²,

McNeal³

et al. 2018

Geological Society of America Abstracts With Programs

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…This framework, more so than the other three, is highly contextualized. Examples of work done in this area include studies on student reasoning on real-world systems like coastal eutrophication (Sell et al, 2006;McNeal et al, 2008), ecosystem dynamics (Grotzer et al, 2013;Sutter et al, 2018), soil microbial activity (Appel et al, 2014), and socio-hydrologic systems (Gunckel et al, 2012;Sabel et al, 2017;Forbes et al, 2018;Petitt and Forbes, 2019).…”

Section: Authentic Complex Earth and Environmental Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between active learning, course innovation, and teaching Earth systems thinking: A structural equation modeling approach

et al. 2019

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Earth systems thinking (EST), or thinking of the Earth as a complex system made up of interworking subsystems, has been shown to reflect the highest level of knowing and understanding in the geosciences. Previous work has found four frameworks of EST that repeatedly appear in the geoscience education literature. This study aims to quantitatively build on this work by employing structural equation modeling to understand the current state of EST teaching as shown by the 2016 iteration of the National Geoscience Faculty Survey (United States; n = 2615). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on survey items to understand and develop three models, one for EST teaching practices, one for course changes, and one for active-learning teaching practices. Analyses revealed that reported EST teaching practices relate back to the four EST frameworks proposed in the literature. The three models explored in this study were used to build a full structural model, where it was hypothesized that active-learning teaching practices would predict EST course changes and EST teaching. However, the model revealed that EST course changes mediate, or bring about, the relationship between active-learning teaching practices and EST teaching. In other words, the relationship between active-learning and EST teaching practices is not direct. This implies the need for continued efforts to provide professional development opportunities in both active-learning teaching practices and EST, as active-learning practices are not sufficient to implicitly teach EST skills. Results also revealed that the teaching approaches that emphasize modeling and complexity sciences had the weakest relationship to the broader EST teaching practices, suggesting a need for more professional development opportunities as they relate to systems modeling, quantitative reasoning, and complexity sciences in the context of the Earth sciences.

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“…The characteristics of inquiry-based learning and instruction include generating questions/problems, the autonomous and active engagement of learners, task authenticity, and a focus on higher-level learning goals. Empirical evidence shows that inquiry learning and instruction help to enhance conceptual understanding (McNeal, Miller, & Herbert, 2008;Nugent, Kunz, Levy, Harwood, & Carlson, 2008;Wallace, Tsoi, Calkin, & Darley, 2003), the development of learning skills and strategies (Brickman, Gormally, Armstrong, & Hallar, 2009;Fuselier, Bougary, & Malott, 2011;Quitadamo, Faiola, Johnson, & Kurtz, 2008), as well as the application of learning (Hurd, 2008;Iqbal & Chowdhury, 2007). However, inquiry has to be well understood if it is to be successfully implemented in classroom instruction.…”

Section: Inquirymentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining Undergraduate Students’ Conceptions of Inquiry in Terms of Epistemic Belief Differences

Getahun

Saroyan

Aulls

2016

CJHE

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The purpose of the study was to examine undergraduate students’ conceptions of inquiry and the relationship of inquiry conceptions to epistemic beliefs. Data were obtained from 107 university students (80 female, 27 male) using an open-ended questionnaire to examine their conceptions of inquiry and Schommer’s Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire to group participants as naïve or sophisticated in their epistemic beliefs. Data analyses revealed that participants with sophisticated epistemic beliefs had multidimensional conceptions of inquiry and provided conceptually rich definitions. Students with naïve beliefs, on the other hand, revealed more simplistic and indistinct conceptions of inquiry and either described it with few details or stated that they did not know about it. The study in general indicated the presence of a relationship between epistemic beliefs and inquiry conceptions, implying that any practical effort to change the way students conceptualize a phenomenon in general and inquiry in particular needs to take into account their epistemic beliefs.

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The Effect of Using Inquiry and Multiple Representations on Introductory Geology Students' Conceptual Model Development of Coastal Eutrophication

Cited by 22 publications

References 47 publications

National Survey of Geoscience Teaching Practices 2016: Current Trends in Geoscience Instruction of Scientific Modeling and Systems Thinking

National Survey of Geoscience Teaching Practices 2016: Current Trends in Geoscience Instruction of Scientific Modeling and Systems Thinking

The relationship between active learning, course innovation, and teaching Earth systems thinking: A structural equation modeling approach

Examining Undergraduate Students’ Conceptions of Inquiry in Terms of Epistemic Belief Differences

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