Broadening geoscience teaching in elementary and secondary school a way to disseminate geoscience methods
Cheikhou Thiome, Cite Scolaire International=EABIntroduction
According to the Geological Society of America (GSA) the basic knowledge of Earth science is essential to meeting the environmental challenges and natural resource limitations of the twenty-first century.
Training elementary, middle and high school teachers becomes critical to disseminate the geoscience teaching methods.
What perspectives for Geoscience teaching in schools?
Helping the next generations preserve and face environmental challenges have to be worked out at a very early age. What does it require in terms of resources and human resource mobilization at the grassroots level?
Making schools and stakeholders involve in geoscience teaching guarantees a sustainable way to understand and apprehend all relations between humans and their environment.
A global movement of geoscience teaching advocacy has to be implemented in order to disseminate geoscience teaching methods. This include also involvement of scientists in conceptualizing adapted and integrated curriculum in classes. This dissemination can only be settles through a vast teacher training program.
What kinds of geoscience teaching tools for elementary, and secondary schools?
In recent years, advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have changed the way we can look at science education in primary and secondary education. New, mobile and user-friendly products are available to help institutions introduce new units and activities into their programs. However, as most educators know, materials are not enough to change the way teachers - or the school - approach science education in classrooms. In other words, better tools and development of better pedagogy do not necessarily go hand in hand. Of course, society wants both for its children. The school must provide stimulating environments for learners and enable them to acquire valuable skills in the field of ICT while cultivating a taste for learning and a desire for discovery.
When technology becomes a support for science education, what are the effects on programs and evaluation? How can the teacher integrate the latest innovations in the subject? We know that students do not learn through ICTs; they learn through the interactions between their reflection and their activities (with or without ICTs). The conclusion is clear: teachers and their pedagogical approaches make a considerable difference in what students learn and realize during a course
Incentives
Encouraging geoscience teaching requires lot of incentives both on learners and teachers side. How to make parents, community and local authorities support geoscience teaching remains crucial in the process of promoting geoscience teaching.
- Setting up a digital library in schools.
- Geoscience competition with awards
- Global geoscience day at school
- Global geoscience teaching society to be set up
- North south geoscience teaching exchange program
- E-learning geoscience teaching platform
- Global geoscience teaching at elementary and secondary school conference
Conclusion
By questioning the objectives of science education, it shows that developing technical and scientific knowledge can also develop a broader, more ethical view of the world in the learner. In allowing young learners acquire geoscientific knowledge can be a great help in the promotion of geoscience teaching. Teaching Earth science to young learners is a good response to the prevention of the environment and helps them in the protection of their environment.