The Importance of Providing Common Experience and Personal Relevance in Engaging Students In Earth Science Concepts.

Abstract:

Engaging secondary students in science, especially the earth sciences, can be challenging for teachers. This is especially true for teachers of students in urban districts with a large percentage of students from lower socio-economic status, resource-poor households who tend to be underrepresented in the STEM fields. Often, the disconnect is a result of a lack of effort to provide context or relevance to the students. In my former role as a teacher and currently as Science Curriculum and Instructional Specialist for Richmond City Public Schools (VA), I actively incorporate inclusive practices into Earth science curriculum. Using the 5E (Engage, Experience, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate) model, Earth science material can be presented in a way that emphasizes societal significance, personal connection, and sense of place. Providing common experiences and personally relevant contexts ensures that all students approach a concept on equal footing and heightens engagement for a population of students who do not always see value in the natural world. Examples of this from my own classroom include the use of local research on heat islands and socio-economic status as a hook to engage students in albedo effect, doing a deep dive into the minerals used in personal electronics when teaching about the physical properties of minerals, and creating soil quality maps of our city when learning the fundamentals of soil. These practices could be easily incorporated into Earth science higher education classrooms in order to create spaces that enable students to thrive, regardless of their background.