Cultivating Geoscience Literacy – What does it take?

Geosciences are essential for managing mineral, energy, and water resources; developing infrastructure; mitigating natural hazards; and understanding climate systems. Despite their foundational importance to economic prosperity and planetary stewardship, most people lack geoscience literacy, hindering informed decision-making on critical issues.

Supporting geoscience-literate societies requires three components: teachers with deep geoscience knowledge, education research supporting instructional improvement, and leaders who prioritize geoscience education through adequate resources and time allocation. Geoscience learning ecosystems (GLE) offer potential solutions by engaging local communities in sustainable programs that promote literacy and inspire learning while leveraging existing social systems to accelerate geoscience solutions.

Limited research has examined learning ecosystem applications in geosciences. This presentation outlines emerging GLE theory and research methodologies, illustrated through a mixed-methods case study of Earth science (ES) teachers implementing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

The study investigated ES teachers in an NGSS-adopted state lacking cohesive implementation plans, addressing three objectives: identifying attributes preparing teachers for NGSS sustainability standards, understanding how teachers' experiences, science belonging, knowledge, and ecological worldview influence instruction, and describing teachers' support networks.

Survey data from 245 ES teachers underwent path analysis, revealing that teachers' degree credentials predicted their sense of belonging in science, which subsequently influenced content knowledge, worldview, and place-based instructional strategy usage. Follow-up interviews with survey participants explored support networks utilized when teaching ES, providing insights into effective GLE development and implementation strategies for enhancing geoscience education.