Synthesis: Discussion and Implications
Kristen St. John, James Madison University; Kelsey Bitting, Northeastern University; Cinzia Cervato, Iowa State University; Kim A. Kastens, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; Heather Macdonald, College of William & Mary; John R. McDaris, SERC at Carleton College; Karen S. McNeal, Auburn University; Heather L. Petcovic, Western Michigan University; Eric J. Pyle, James Madison University; Eric M. Riggs, Texas A&M University; Katherine Ryker, University of South Carolina; Steven Semken, Arizona State University-Tempe; Rachel Teasdale, California State University-Chico.
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This project was a formidable undertaking, necessary to position our community to achieve an important goal: to improve undergraduate teaching and learning about the Earth by focusing the power of Geoscience Education Research (GER) on a set of ambitious, high-priority, community-endorsed grand challenges. (See Framework Development for a detailed description of the supporting project objectives.) Working groups, through examination of the literature and with the aid of reviewers' insights, identified two to five grand challenges for each of the ten research themes. The thematic grand challenges illuminate interconnected paths for future GER. Collective this creates a guiding framework to harness the power of GER to improve undergraduate teaching and learning about the Earth; This framework is represented abstractly by the drawing in Figure 1.
While the individual theme chapters lay out the rationales for those large-scale "grand challenge" research questions and offer strategies for addressing them, here the purpose is to summarize and synthesize - to highlight thematic research priorities and synergies that may be avenues for research efficiencies and powerful outcomes.
Citation for this chapter: St. John, Kristen; Bitting, Kelsey; Cervato, Cinzia; Kastens, Kim A.; Macdonald, Heather; McDaris, John R.; McNeal, Karen S.; Petcovic, Heather L.; Pyle, Eric J.; Riggs, Eric M.; Ryker, Katherine; Semken, Steven; and Teasdale, Rachel (2018). "Synthesis: Discussion and Implications". In St. John, K (Ed.) (2018). Community Framework for Geoscience Education Research. National Association of Geoscience Teachers. https://doi.org/10.25885/ger_framework/12