Collaborative Research: EAGER--Cognition in the Wild: Understanding How Students and Experts Reason about Atmospheric Processes

This project aims to investigate the cognitive processes that support reasoning about complex atmospheric processes, including prediction of extreme weather events. There is currently no theoretical basis for understanding this kind of reasoning. Nor is there a complete understanding of how experts transfer their reasoning skills to students. The project is taking a novel approach that involves embedding researchers in 11-day long convective field studies. The field studies create opportunities for students to experience authentic atmospheric processes in a rich learning environment with mentoring by more experienced atmospheric scientists. The merger of expertise within the highly interactive learning environment affords a unique opportunity to observe student and expert practice, ask questions, and conduct interviews. This early-stage research is important for atmospheric science, cognitive science, and education because it seeks to understand how atmospheric scientists reason about real world atmospheric processes and how they share this expertise with students. By studying how experts convey deep aspects of their thinking to students and how students assimilate expert practice, the project will lay the groundwork for a program of future investigations into complex atmospheric processes that will inform both cognitive and natural sciences and guide evidence -informed atmospheric science education. The project seeks to build a foundation for future transformative work with goals to 1) Contribute intellectually to cognitive science with new theories of human reasoning about complex fluid phenomena; 2) Pursue an understanding of expert reasoning in atmospheric science and how experts transfer that reasoning to students; and 3) Connect current education practice with research based evidence of how students think and learn in authentic atmospheric science contexts. The project is taking an interdisciplinary perspective with a research team that includes a cognitive scientist, a geoscience education researcher, and two atmospheric scientists. The team is using methods associated with cognitive anthropology to observe student and expert practice, ask questions, and conduct interviews. How individuals think about fluid transformation is an unresearched area in cognitive science that exists at the frontier of our understanding of how the mind understands and makes predictions about complex processes. Through this project, researchers are investigating a whole domain of thinking that will motivate future work. For the burgeoning atmospheric science education research (ASER) effort, this is especially essential; research that seeks to develop theory is vital to providing a firm grounding for any studied phenomena. This project is supported by the IUSE Program. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. 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.