Time in Geological Explanations as Perceived by Elementary-School Students

An Analysis of Misconceptions in Science Textbooks: Earth science in England and Wales

“…Geological time, correlation and dating Children's understanding of geological time was investigated by Ault (1982) and this work has been followed up more recently by a number of researchers. Schoon ( , 1995 showed that nearly a third of the US primary (10-11 year old) pupils and a fifth of the pre-service primary teachers in his surveys thought that dinosaurs lived at the same time as cavemen.…”

How Do We Help Students Build Beliefs That Allow Them to Avoid Critical Learning Barriers and Develop A Deep Understanding of Geology?

“…After the questionnaire, similar to findings by Ault (1982), Happs (1982), Westerback et al (1985), Bezzi and Happs (1994), Sharp et al (1995), Trend (1998), it will be possible to formulate four types of students' alternative frameworks relative to the formation of volcanic rocks:…”

“…• The Earth's materials: minerals and rocks (Happs, 1982(Happs, , 1985Dove, 1998;Ford, 2005); • The Earth's Structure (Lillo, 1994;Sharp et al 1995;Blake, 2005); • The Earth's processes: mountains, volcanoes, earthquakes, weathering and erosion, and geological time (Bezzi & Happs 1994;Sharp et al 1995;Russell et al 1993) • Geological time (Hume, 1978;Ault, 1982;Trend, 1998). These studies confirm that children develop their own, mostly non-scientific, understanding of earth science concepts before instruction, and describe and interpret these in everyday terms that are familiar to them.…”

“…In addition, they have shown not only how generally limited children's understanding of the Earth's structure, processes and materials is, but how different their conceptions are from those of earth scientists. Importantly, key "critical barriers" to children developing a scientific understanding in this domain have been identified (Ault, 1982;Bezzi & Happs 1994;Trend, 1998):…”

The significance of geologic time: Cultural, educational, and economic frameworks

“…Our central challenge is to find new ways to impart a broad and rich understanding of geologic time to students across the curriculum. While some of the evidence on the impediments to teaching geologic time is anecdotal, there is a growing body of research on the subject that ranges from the elementary to college level and to pre-and in-service teachers (e.g., Ault, 1982;Schoon, 1992;Trend, 2001;Dodick andOrion, 2003a, 2003b;Libarkin et al, 2005Libarkin et al, , 2007.…”