90-6 Teaching Across Epistemic Borders: Shifting Student Understanding of Geoscience through the Nature of Science (NOS) Instruction

Session: Diversifying Geoscience Education Across the Academic Playing Field: Using Creative Methods to Foster the Current and Next Generations of Geoscience Professionals, Part I

Presenting Author:

Authors:

Abstract:

The Nature of Science (NOS) is an important component of scientific literacy, as it addresses how scientific knowledge is developed, validated, and applied. Research shows that explicitly teaching NOS improves students’ understanding of science and increases engagement and retention in STEM fields. However, NOS is rarely addressed in geoscience education, especially its inferential, tentative, and human-centered aspects.

This study reports on the development and implementation of a two-day educational intervention designed to enhance students’ understanding of three key NOS concepts: the role of observation and inference (OI), the tentativeness of scientific knowledge (T), and the idea that science is a human endeavor (SHE).  The research uses a design-based implementation approach, involving the development, classroom testing, and iterative refinement of the intervention lesson that draws on historical narratives, inquiry-based tasks, and principles of relative age dating. To measure conceptual change and students’ understanding of the nature of science, a quasi-experimental evaluation design was used to deliver the lesson to students in introductory geoscience courses (the control group received traditional lecture-based instruction on relative dating).  Pre-and-post the lesson, students completed the Nature of Geoscientific Knowledge Questionnaire (NGKQ), which includes 37 Likert-scale items and 8 open-ended questions.   Pre-intervention results reveal that both experimental and control students often emphasized experimentation and overlooked the role of observation and inferences. Post-intervention responses showed better understanding of geoscientific reasoning among the experimental group with regard to  “observation, inference, and the tentativeness of geoscience theories.  Many students also reported that the intervention helped them learn the content more deeply and would likely help them recall it in the future.

This research contributes to the broader discussion of how geoscience crosses philosophical and epistemological boundaries and reinforces the importance of incorporating NOS instruction into geoscience education as a means to promote scientific literacy that recognizes science as an interpretive, evolving, and humanly shaped endeavor.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

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