The primary goal of the scoping meeting was to set the focus for each of the four topical syntheses that will be developed by this project. At the end of the scoping meeting we had identified these foci:

Field-Based Learning
Leaders: Dave Mogk and Chuck Goodwin

Field observations provide the fundamental platform on which hypotheses about the open, heterogeneous and dynamic Earth system are formulated and tested. Moreover, field research is central to a crucial range of scientific inquiry that is typically ignored in visions of science that are predicated on the ability to control variables in the closed laboratory environment as the exemplar of scientific thinking and practice. Relevant questions encompass how learning in the field is accomplished; what are the unique skills, strategies, methods, embodied practices, and ways of knowing that are encompassed by field instruction; under what circumstances does this occur; and how should learning in the field be balanced with other methods and technologies in an integrated instructional portfolio. The goal of this study is to establish a strong, scholarly foundation that demonstrates the ways in which field studies contribute to the training of all geoscientists. By extension, we anticipate that this will expand society's understanding of what constitutes scientific practice and demonstrate the relevance of this perspective to both personal and communal decision-making about our stewardship of the Earth. To address this challenge, we propose to look in detail at the following topics:

• What do we mean by "learning in the field" compared with other learning environments ? What is the relative importance of "live" vs. "virtual" experiences, and how do they inform each other?
• How is learning in the field accomplished, and what is distinctive about learning in this environment? What skills are uniquely learned in the field, what methods are used to most effectively teach these skills? There is an emerging strain of research in cognitive science that focus on the organization of knowledge in communities and real world environments and work with relevant tools.
• What distinctive social structures are formed by learning as a community in the field? This includes trust, social learning, motivation, collaboration skills, sharing expertise, distributed cognition, and affective impacts. An important aspect is embodied hands on experience in contingent environments while working with skilled practictioners. What are the affective aspects of learning in the field, and how do these influence learning?
• How is this linked to the organization of knowledge in the larger community. Phenomena that can be examined include the chain of inscriptions (observation to representation to model to problems of interest) - what is the role of field experience in learning how this works?

Temporal Concepts in the Geosciences
Leaders: Bob Frodeman and Cinzia Cervato

The goal of our synthesis of Temporal Concepts in the Geosciences is to improve students' appreciation of deep time with the goal to improving the public's understanding of environmental change. Truly understanding the effects of our use of natural resources such as groundwater and petroleum and patterns of land use such as beachfronts and fire-prone landscapes, are deeply dependent on appreciating the multiple time scales and rates that Earth processes operate on. Resources that appear nearly infinite on the time scale of the next economic quarter reveal themselves as radically finite on decadal, century, or millennial scales. Decisions made today concerning the production of greenhouse gases will be with us for centuries; the loss of global biodiversity may take millions of years to recover.

Topics that we will explore include:

• Policy implications of low-frequency, high-risk events
• Political and cultural dimensions of geologic time and importance of rates, fluxes, frequencies, durations, and cycles of geologic processes
• Use of metaphors, analogies, and proxies to represent and convey times and rates outside of human experience
• Is geological time experienceable, or able to be represented? How can we make deep time more quickly intuitive for students?

Spatial Thinking in Geosciences
Leaders: Lynn Liben and Steve Reynolds

The geosciences are inherently spatial because they concern phenomena in which spatial properties (e.g., shape, orientation, extent, paths) and spatial locations are critical. Geoscientists visualize hidden geologic structures, processes in Earth's deep interior, topography of the sea floor, and largely invisible atmospheric currents. Learning or practicing geoscience thus calls upon spatial thinking, and the use of varied spatial representations (e.g., graphic, gestural, numerical, verbal, physical). The goals of our synthesis are to:

• Identify potentially relevant component spatial skills for geosciences (e.g., skills in mental rotation, pattern recognition, connecting 1-, 2-, and 3-D representations, visualizing cross sections) and review existing systems for categorizing these skills. Our goal will be to provide an integrative structure that incorporates and extends extant systems.
• Illustrate how key geoscience concepts (from a range of disciplines) call upon spatial thinking and representation (i.e., expanding Kastens & Ishikawa's analysis of geology and extending it to other geosciences)
• Examine links between spatial instruction and geoscience mastery. More specifically, we will cover research on (a) the relation between learners' spatial skills and geoscience mastery; (b) whether instruction in spatial skills enhances spatial skills and geoscience mastery, and the reverse; (c) whether there is transfer and under what circumstances; and (d) effects of learner variables (e.g., gender) on the above.
• Review research on the effectiveness or impact of various spatial representational systems, with a particular emphasis on (a) the role of producing or using alternative representations of phenomena (e.g., graphics, scale models, computer simulations) and (b) the role of new technologies (e.g., do technologies like GPS and CAD reduce or enhance human learners' skills?)

Complex Systems of the Earth
Tim Spangler and Neil Stillings

The goal of our synthesis in this area is to understand the cognitive and educational implications of systems geoscience. The fundamental mission of earth system science is the study of connections and interactions among the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, cryosphere (ice and snow), solid Earth, and anthroposphere (objects and processes attributable to humans). To approach the Earth as a complex system students must learn to think in terms of multiple intertwined causality chains, the many sources of evidence that are relevant to understanding these chains, and hallmarks of complexity, such as negative or positive feedback loops, sensitivity to initial conditions, and chaotic behavior. Earth system science integrates the themes of time, space, and field research covered earlier in this report.

The overarching learning goal of understanding the Earth as a system defines several issues in psychological theory and in instructional theory and practice that will be addressed in the synthesis.

• We must apply theories of scientific concept learning and scientific reasoning to learning about complex systems and about investigative strategies that do not fit the dominant textbook model of the controlled laboratory experiment. Inevitably, we will be led to suggest needed lines of psychological and educational research.
• We must characterize established strategies and suggest promising new strategies for introducing students to complex earth systems and to developing their understanding.
• We must identify paradigmatic examples and model systems that are known to be or likely to be useful in instruction and outline properties of models that make them useful in the classroom. We must consider the implications for student learning of different ways of representing systems models, as well as the possible benefits of exposing students to multiple representations.
• We must explore both the exciting prospects and potential pitfalls of putting the power of computational models in the hands of students.
• In contemplating learning environments in which students are working with models of complex systems, we must consider strategies for fostering their understanding of the distinction between the representation and the actual world and for creating opportunities to relate models to field data and to learn to refine models in response to data.
• Finally, we must consider ways to allow students to confront the profound policy implications of contemporary models of the Earth system.