314-1 Empowering Indigenous-Serving Educators through Place-Based Geoscience: Innovative Lesson Design and STEM Identity Outcomes

Abstract:

The U.S. Southwest's historic megadrought creates an urgent need for innovative geoscience lesson plans that resonate with today's classrooms, particularly for Indigenous students disproportionately affected by climate change. We present a one-day, place-based professional development workshop and curriculum built around dust as an anchoring phenomenon: a locally observable, culturally resonant environmental challenge shaping Diné and Hopi community memory. Twelve K-12 teachers in Flagstaff, Arizona, engaged in hands-on lessons structured around Bybee's 5E instructional model and Cajete's "Igniting the Sparkle" framework for Indigenous science education. Hands-on activities drew on Paleoclimate Reconstruction Storehouse (PReSto) map visualizations and integrated Navajo (Diné) and Hopi Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with Western geoscience content, including physical lakebed coring to model sediment sampling, tree-ring ("tree cookie") analysis linked to the North American Drought Atlas, and tactile dust-transport simulations such as "Dust in a Box" and a modified cloud-in-a-bottle demonstration. We designed each lesson so teachers would experience it first as learners, model implementation for their own students, and demonstrate how a single locally grounded phenomenon can anchor standards-aligned instruction across grade bands (K-12) and disciplines.

Matched pre- and post-workshop surveys assessed geoscience knowledge, teaching confidence, pedagogical practice, and values and beliefs. Teachers reported large gains in content knowledge, confidence, and place-based teaching practices, with the two dust-focused activities rated most valuable by 83% of participants combined (50% and 33%, respectively). Thematic analysis of open-ended responses showed a marked shift in STEM identity, from pre-workshop expressions of inadequacy toward post-workshop statements of professional confidence and concrete plans for adapting activities to participants' own communities. These results demonstrate a replicable, transferable model: hands-on lessons built around a locally salient phenomenon and grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing can be adapted by educators in other regions to connect place, culture, and geoscience content. This model offers a practical toolkit of activities and pedagogical strategies for classrooms serving diverse student populations.

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