MiTEP ESI-2 June 24-28, 2013

This second year of summer Earth Science Teaching for MiTEP aims to build on last year’s experience and to change many parts of it. You should feel that the leaders of this class have learned from you, because we have tried very hard to do that. You should notice that your class assignments are much more clearly made. You should feel that what we do is clearly linked to Earth Science big ideas and curricula. You should notice that we try to address misconceptions. You should feel that we use time better. Hopefully because of all these things you will appreciate the experience more and learn more.

The Second Year-- June 24-28, 2013

Course Philosophy

This class is to introduce Earth Science content to science teachers, with help at presenting this material in inquiry form to students. It is aimed to emphasize the development of the participants’ problem-solving skills and will employ inquiry based techniques. An important part of the class will use tools that research scientists use and to teach participants to do scientific research. The style of the class is observational, geographical, descriptive, analytical and interpretive. It is aimed to repeatedly apply a sequence of logical questions that can be tested, so that hypotheses can be rejected or refined.

Overall the subject matter is how the earth works. We aim to engage participants in understanding, interpreting, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating their own observations in the same way as scientists do. Since all of us live on the earth, the topics are fundamentally linked to a sustainable world, and education of earth people about earth processes is an essential scientific obligation.