Low enrollment and high attrition of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) continues to be an issue for postsecondary institutions. Improvements in representation of women has been seen in some of the agricultural and biological sciences; however, in many of the more math intensive areas such as geosciences,…

Background: Science teachers represent the critical link to the development of a scientifically literate citizenry who is capable of addressing societal problems and global challenges in ways that positively affect the quality of life. Purpose: We investigated how a long-term, inquiry-based professional development program could be utilized to…

This study aimed to investigate undergraduates' perspectives of online syllabus design and interactivity in an asynchronous geoscience course. The study was grounded in previous research on syllabus design and interactivity and used a multiple case study design to gather data from five participants. The course had multiple sections, each with a…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many undergraduate internships, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs, were canceled or moved online. Although several studies have examined student success during the online transition, less research has examined how REU programs have changed from this…

Much of the focus of international comparative studies of students' achievement has been on New Zealand students' falling standards. Using the most recent findings from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and, in particular, Year 9 New Zealand students' performance in specific items, this article suggests that there…

Active learning classrooms (ALCs) are designed to support collaborative learning in large class sections that are often taught with a lecture format. Studies on ALCs indicate that they have positive influences on student learning, but the same studies fail to look at learning differences between subgroups of students. In the current study,…

The 2019 "Minnesota Academic Standards in Science (Standards)" set the expectations for achievement in science for grades K-12 students in Minnesota. The standards are grounded in the belief that all students can and should be scientifically literate. Graduates should be prepared for career and college opportunities. The…

The 2019 "Minnesota Academic Standards in Science" (Standards) set the expectations for achievement in science for grades K-12 students in Minnesota. The standards are grounded in the belief that all students can and should be scientifically literate. The "Standards" describe a connected body of science and engineering…

This paper pilots a method of testing the learning effects of a role-playing simulation of negotiations over the Nile basin. Players negotiate how to apply general principles from international law, such as sharing water equitably and avoiding significant harm, to specific circumstances of the river basin. Students are presented with a set of…

Traditional Knowledge (TK) is a qualitative and quantitative living body of knowledge developed locally and regionally across generations over thousands of years. This study aims to show through authentic voice the importance of centering TK systems and cultural needs to provide equitable geoscience education programs. TK can be communicated…

The geoscience community has begun to grapple with the whiteness of the community and the harm and erasure of Indigenous communities done by earth and environmental scientists. We have come to understand that to recruit and retain Indigenous students, geoscience education needs to be culturally responsive by explicitly centering Indigenous…

A large body of work has shown that science teacher knowledge is one of the most fundamental components of effective teaching and learning. Our study analyzes the Praxis® Earth and Space Science Content Knowledge Test (ESS CKT) from May 2006 to June 2016. We present one of the largest datasets comprising 11,273 ESS teacher candidates in order to…

Sociocultural language learning theory and situated learning theory stress the importance of social interactions and context in both science and language learning. In addition, researchers have highlighted the important role that multimodal language plays in meaning-making and communication in science. The purpose of this study was to examine the…

The future viability of the geosciences is challenged, since as a community we continue to lack demographic diversity representative of the wider population. Fundamentally, dominant cultural, historical, and socioeconomic factors contribute to the lack of diversity and those factors typically change slowly over generations. Proposals for more…

In this paper, we present a physical modeling activity whose objective is to allow students to determine the differences between a disk and a sphere using pure scientific criteria. Thereunto, we reproduce the Sun-Earth-Moon system with low-cost materials and compare the illumination effects on the Moon considering two possible shapes for it (a…