CCD: Linking Undergraduate Geoscience Research Programs and Teacher Education Programs

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In research universities students who have declared a major in one of the geosciences are often ineligible to take the education courses necessary for state certification. In order to enroll in education courses to meet the state's Department of Education course requirements for a teaching credential, these students must drop their geoscience major and declare an education major. Students enrolled in education programs often face a similar program in that advanced science major course work is not available to them. As a result, universities too often produce science majors with a weak pedagogical background, or education majors with a weak geoscience background. Moreover, there is little collective university faculty attention paid to pre-college teacher preparation. Spurred on by the National Science Standards, the demand for earth science teachers in our schools far exceeds the number of available enormous. In this project, The American Geophysical Union, brings together geoscience and education faculty, and appropriate administrators, from four higher education institutions for the purposes of finding and developing a viable undergraduate curriculum that will lead to teacher certification for geoscience students. These four institutions, and the programs they develop and implement, will serve as models for other institutions. This initiative will present ways in which a four-year, science- based major can effectively integrate a professional education component. This initiative, an accompanying report, and special teacher preparation session(s), held at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, will serve as an important implementation model for other institutions working to develop similar programs.