The field of science education has put effort into providing opportunities for students to position themselves as epistemic agents pursuing the goal of making sense of natural phenomena. However, students often struggle in adapting scientific practices to achieve the sense-making goal. In this position paper, we conceptualise students'…

This paper highlights the design process and implementation for an "all majors" undergraduate course that allows students a chance to reconnect with the natural world. During this course students explore a wide range of biological and physical science based topics that seek to highlight human intervention and our impacts on the planet.…

A science café and a concert with a panel discussion were held with public audiences to communicate information about global change and ecosystem soundscapes. Both events were evaluated through: (i) post-event surveys to measure global change perceptions, awareness, and attitudes; (ii) skin biosensors to measure the engagement levels of a…

Polar research plays a vital role in developing our understanding of Earth's climate system. It is intrinsically interdisciplinary, lending itself to integration into existing undergraduate courses. Here we explore introducing undergraduates to polar research through computational guided inquiry (CGI) modules taught in a variety of courses and…

Micrometeorites originate from small pieces of rock from space colliding with the Earth's atmosphere at high velocity, such as the Perseid meteors which hit the atmosphere at 60 km/s. When they do so, they burn up, causing a flash of light that we see as a meteor. Many groups have been successful collecting these particles using various devices.…

This study offers curriculum developers, teachers, and science education researchers a fine-grained profile on strengths and weaknesses in specific science domains and topics. The study involved a representative sample of 3844 Norwegian pupils in grade 8. Their responses on 216 TIMSS items in 18 topics from 4 science domains were modelled in a…

Increasing diversity in the geosciences has remained a challenge, despite large investments made by federal agencies in minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and historically black universities and colleges (HBCUs). With increasing challenges associated with climate and environmental change and severe and frequent natural disasters that…

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) decades-long investment in science and engineering (S&E) research helped build the backbone of the U.S. scientific enterprise and transformed universities and colleges into centers of scientific innovation, creativity, knowledge and discovery. It also brought about the benefits of scientific…

This study provides a narrative analysis of the challenges and opportunities faced by scholars in the field of geoscience education (GED). A set of interviews was conducted with five GED professionals in 2010. Participants discussed challenges and opportunities in GED both for individual practitioners and as a discipline. Select participants were…

Most education reform documents of the last two decades call for students to have authentic science inquiry experiences that mimic scientific research using real scientific data. In order for professional planetary scientists to provide the most useful data and professional development for K-12 teachers in support of science education reform, an…

Understanding the vagrancies of climate, a vast, complex subject, requires a multidisciplinary approach, focusing on the ocean's effects on the atmosphere and vice versa. (Author/BB)

El Nino is a complex periodic oceanographic event that occurs off the west coast of South America, adversely affecting climate not only in the local area but in other regions of the world. There is evidence that the equatorial regions hold the key to predicting this economically destructive phenomenon. (Author/BB)

Antarctic drilling and mapping projects are reported on. (BB)

This is the first article of a two-part series on how research can help reduce the hazards of earthquakes. It deals with attempts to predict quakes so that people can get out of the way. (Author/HM)

Geologists in this field are becoming increasingly involved in studies of land use. (Author/BB)