Museums and mud: An experiential undergraduate geology course for pre-service teachers

Abstract

This chapter provides reflection on the origins, development, support and challenges, and feedback on experiential learning (EL) in my GEO 204 “Geology for Teachers” course. Many fundamental observations in geology take place outdoors, i.e., during fieldwork. The course is an introductory geology class for preservice teachers. I describe how I incorporated more hands-on, inquiry-based experiential experiences to mirror current best practices which state that science is taught more effectively at the K-16 level using hands-on, inquiry EL. The course features three or four field experiences per semester, that range from: visiting a museum to understand the diversity of minerals or a part of the history of life on earth; investigating a road cut in rural Ohio to gain insights into what southwestern Ohio was like 450 million years ago when tropical seas covered the area; measuring the orientation of scratches (glacial striations) left on bedrock by a moving glacier transporting sediment (clay, sand, pebbles, and boulders) during the “Ice Age,” in a nearby city park. Other experiences have included understanding the development of a cave system and its cave formations (stalactites, stalagmites, etc.), examining local river environments and processes, and also a “trip to Mars” at a Challenger Center-a NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) curriculum-based experiential educational facility. The incorporation of field trips allows for the investigation of real, local geology rather than textbook examples and provides opportunities to integrate geological concepts, scientific observation, and to think like a geologist.