Designing For Pedagogical Change in the Geosciences: A Formative Intervention

Building on prior efforts to shift organizational culture within the geosciences field and dominant approaches to postsecondary teaching and learning, this project makes a much-needed contribution to literature in education and the geosciences by addressing two urgent yet underexplored dimensions of equity-minded pedagogical change work in higher education: 1) the need to prepare instructors to historicize curriculum to more readily address and combat the racialized foundations of their field of study, and 2) the need to support academic departments’ organizational capacity to facilitate sustained change around teaching and learning. With this approach, the project will advance knowledge and practice for cultural change in a seminal portion of the learning and training ecosystem for geoscientists. The researchers plan to leverage methodological tools from the learning sciences, namely formative interventions, to facilitate tangible change in academic departments through the design and implementation of two learning environments: 1) an 8-hour short course, where participants will learn about and identify how racial exploitation and settler colonialism have shaped not only the history of the geosciences, but also its current practices and disciplinary culture, and 2) a 2-day, in-person workshop, where researchers will provide participants with tangible tools to identify and work through a problem of practice related to implementing pedagogical change in their department. This research will yield a conceptual model and establish a set of design principles for advancing equity-minded pedagogical change, contributing to improved learning experiences and outcomes for historically marginalized students in the geosciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.