Effect of professional development on teachers' understanding of interdisciplinary earth science concepts

Abstract

The Critical Zone describes the interactions that support life on Earth among the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. To truly understand the complex processes, scientists must look outside their immediate focus: geologists, biologists, hydrologists, and physicists collaborate to see how their research fits together. Teachers can do the same and use critical zone concepts to bridge across subjects and from the classroom to the real world. Unfortunately, K12 teachers may not have the requisite knowledge or research experience to feel confident in incorporating critical zone topics into their classes, and professional development services provided by scientists may not properly meet those needs. A three-day professional development program, the result of a collaboration between a research group, Critical Zone Network Drylands Hub, and a non-profit science center, Insights Science Discovery, was developed to support teachers with including place-based, cross-curricular instruction. This mixed-methods study aimed to measure the impact on teachers' knowledge of the related concepts and their confidence in teaching it. Teachers were assessed, surveyed, and asked to draw an image or mental representation of the critical zone model and identify related academic disciplines. Both teachers and contributing scientists were surveyed to learn how their motivations for participating in professional development compared to one another. Mental models increased in their complexity and accuracy of CZ components. This result, combined with a modest improvement in their performance on assessments and a substantial increase in confidence towards including CZ concepts in their curriculum, could indicate that the PD successfully impacted teachers and actions in the classroom. Surveys also revealed that teachers and researchers share many of the same motivations for participating in PD. Ultimately, both groups shared that contributing scientists could be better informed about the teachers' context and needs, making PD content more relevant and applicable to better support student motivation and learning.