Establishing A Consensus Of Geology Concepts Using U.S. National Science Education Reform Documents

An important practice of science teachers and science teacher educators is identifying standards and learning objectives before developing curriculum, instructional materials, and assessments. In the Earth sciences, determining a consensus of learning targets from the multiple national reform documents to provide direction to Earth science educators at the K-12 and post-secondary level has proven to be ambiguous. In this study, the purpose was to identify the core ideas that are taught in an introductory geology course and that students would know. Using a simple random sampling scheme, 134 geology educators, which we refer to as content experts, working at the collegiate level across the United States were surveyed to review and provide feedback on the following current national standards reform documents: 1) Next Generation Science Standards; 2) Earth Science Literacy Principles; 3) National Science Education Standards; and 4) Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy. With a 29.9% response rate, 11 core ideas of geology were identified by the geology educators. Additionally, national reform documents and the top reviewed state science standards were used to verify the 11 core ideas. The final product is a consensus document that provides the 11 core ideas proposed by a consensus of four national reform standards documents, content experts (geologists and geology educators), and the top state science standards.