A Tool for Exploring Our Fluid Earth (Journal Article)

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Abstract-

Five years ago, the Byrd Center’s Education and Outreach program recognized the need for a new weather and climate visualization for middle school youth and the public. Working across traditional disciplines, the team was able to create a tool that addressed challenges they had identified through delivery of outreach programs and allowed educators to create investigations appropriate for their audience and content.

Inspiring the team were a series of “Challenges Inherent in Teaching Geosciences,” articulated by Kastens from the geosciences education research community, that were consistent with Cervenec’s science teaching experience over 11 years using the Modeling Instruction method.1–3 These challenges included (1) that the scale of phenomena were often well beyond the size of the classroom, (2) that there was a need for well-crafted experiences and models that could bridge the gap in scale, (3) that there was regularly a need to depend on data that students could not practically collect themselves, (4) that there was often a need to depend on nonexperimental ways of inquiry that deviated from the often-taught “scientific method,” (5) that spatial thinking was critically important, and (6) that understanding how phenomena emerged was aided by conceptualizing Earth systems and their interactions.