Research on Thinking and Learning in the Geosciences
Special Issue of the Journal of Geoscience Education
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Journal of Geoscience Education (JGE) is soliciting manuscripts for a thematic issue on research at the intersection between geoscience learning and cognitive sciences. Please contact special-issue associate editors, Kim Kastens or Cathy Manduca, or JGE Editor Carl Drummond for further information.
Description
How does the human mind learn to understand something as big, as four-dimensional, as old, and as complicated as the Earth System? Geoscience educators grapple with this question every day. Like other humans, our students have minds that evolved to perceive, reason about, and make judgments about phenomena within the pre-literate human and hominid life experience. In geoscience classes, we ask our students to apply those minds to Earth and environmental phenomena that are bigger, smaller, faster, slower, farther in the past, farther in future, more complex, and encountered through representations as well as through direct perception. Students find this hard, and we sometimes find it hard to help them. Research on thinking and learning can help.
This special issue seeks contributions that bring insights from cognitive and learning sciences to bear on the challenges of thinking, learning, and teaching about the Earth and environment. It is anticipated that some of the papers in the issue will report findings from the NSF-funded Synthesis of Research on Thinking & Learning in the Geosciences. Additional contributions are invited on aspects of thinking and learning that are distinctive to geosciences, particularly:
- Systems thinking, as applied to the Earth and environment
- Spatial thinking in geosciences
- Temporal thinking in geosciences (geologic time and related temporal concepts)
- Learning in the field
- Knowledge integration and interdisciplinary problem-solving.
All papers must include insights from research AND implications for geoscience education.
Submission Guidelines
The submission deadline is December 31, 2008. Letters of submission should state that the manuscript is intended for this special issue. The Journal of Geoscience Education only accepts submissions through its web-based file management system. Authors must submit their manuscripts in pdf format. JGE is revising its instructions for authors, and these new instructions apply to manuscripts submitted in response to this call. New guidelines will be available on August 15, 2008, at the JGE website.