Math anxiety involves moderate to extreme fear, anxiety, and occasionally physical pain associated with anticipating or performing mathematical tasks. High levels of math anxiety have been tied to students taking lower levels of math and choosing less quantitatively challenging courses and careers. In a small geoscience program in a primarily…

Recruitment and retention are critical for geoscience and the need for innovative ways of building these bridges to the geosciences is growing. Field experiences are a common attractor for students to the field sciences such as geoscience, but many research- and field-based experiences are limited to those who are already majors. Innovative,…

A goal of undergraduate geoscience programs is to prepare students for the geoscience workforce. In order to understand the extent to which programs succeed at this goal, we identified desired workforce skills, compiled undergraduate geoscience program requirements, and mapped workforce skills onto faculty responses to the 2016 National Geoscience…

The Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences (OEDG) program, operational between the years 2001 and 2013, was a signature effort by the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Geosciences (NSF/GEO) to invest in broadening participation of historically underrepresented populations in geoscience education programs and careers.…

Background: STEM educational reform encourages a transition from instructor-centered passive learning environments to student-centered, active learning environments. Instructors adopting these changes incorporate research-validated teaching practices that improve student learning. Professional development that trains faculty to implement…

This article describes a museum-based urban teacher-residency (UTR) program's approach to building subject-specific content knowledge and research experience in Earth Science teacher candidates. In the museum-based program, graduate-level science courses and research experiences are designed and implemented specifically for the UTR by active Earth…

Summer research experiences are an increasingly popular means of increasing awareness of, and developing interest in, the geosciences and other science, technology, engineering, and math programs. We describe and report the preliminary results of a 1-wk Geosciences Exploration Summer Program in the College of Geosciences at Texas A&M…

There have been a limited number of studies on the short-term influence of environmental and earth education programs, however, not much information is available about the long-term influence of these programs on participants' environmental attitudes and actions. This mixed methods study explores the long-term influence of the earth education…

This article reports a preliminary study on the Geosciences in Middle School, which was a career education program in the Southeastern U.S focusing on science based on Super's (1990) theory. The students (n = 80) were found to improve their interests in studying science, increase science knowledge, skills and awareness and highly satisfied with…

In this article, the authors provide an overview and critically analyze three successful faculty-developed urban K-12 science outreach programs. They consider a successful outreach program as one that has been sustained for at least five years after initial funding, and has provided empirically-based research findings from the program.…

In 2000, California introduced science content standards as part of an across the curriculum reform. This presented a special challenge for elementary teachers due to an increased emphasis on math and language arts, and limited science background and resources. This two year qualitative study looks at a professional development program that…

The National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsors a range of programs to fund innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Focuses on NSF's expectations for project evaluation beginning with a definition of evaluation and a discussion of why evaluation is needed. Also describes planning, formative, and summative evaluation stages and concludes…

Thirty teachers and 718 students in grades 4, 5, and 6 in Edmonton, Alberta participated in a study to determine the value of simultaneous one-way television and group telephone conferencing (compared to conventional instruction) for teaching LANDSAT imagery. Results indicate that: (1) a 5-hour instruction period is sufficient to train elementary…

Inverness Research studied the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Seminars on Science program for eight years, from its inception in 1998 to 2006. This paper presents teacher survey ratings for "Earth: Inside and Out", along with profiles of three teachers who took the course. Course takers report on the annual follow-up surveys…

The quality of doctoral-level chemistry (N=145), computer science (N=58), geoscience (N=91), mathematics (N=115), physics (N=123), and statistics/biostatistics (N=64) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: program size; characteristics of graduates; reputational…