Collaborative Research: The Earth Science Literacy Initiative Workshops

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This award will support a new effort to develop a national framework for Earth Science literacy; this document of Big Ideas and supporting concepts will be a community undertaking representing the current state-of-the-art research in Earth sciences. It will be written, evaluated, shaped and revised by the top scientists working in Earth science. The outcome of this effort will be a statement of what the Earth science research community feels all American's should know about Earth Science. The participants will be scientists and educators, with expertise from the diverse portions of the Earth Science, to fully represent the breadth of research within our field. The process of establishing a set of essential principles and fundamental ideas that best represents the entire community will require several steps that are lead by an organizing committee. Broader community input will come through two separate stages: an online workshop of 120-150 people to be held during May 12-24, 2008, and an in-person writing workshop of about held during July 20-23, 2008. There will be final meeting of the organizing committee in January of 2009 to produce the final document from the output of these workshops and a following period of comments and evaluations. The online workshop will focus on vetting a broad scope of ideas from the Earth science research community, and in the in-person writing workshop will focus on combining this information into a coherent document. The outcome will be a living document that will continue to grow and change with future advances in our field. The project's outcomes will be directly tied to current NRC and AAAS science education standards. It will also become part of the foundation, together with similar statements from the Oceans, Atmospheres, Climate and other communities, for an even broader Earth System Science Literacy project.