91 Current Advances in Geoscience Education Research

This session will highlight empirical research being done in the field of geoscience education. We welcome submissions from geoscience education researchers at all career stages to showcase projects that highlight current areas of interest in the discipline.

Monday, 20 October 2025
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
HBGCC, 301B

Bridging Geoscience Education and Social Studies Education: Fostering Interdisciplinary Deliberations about Climate Change Policy with Pre-Service Science and Social Studies Teachers

Paper number: 91-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:25 AM – 10:40 AM

Authors

Abstract

               Climate change education has long been a major area of research within the realm of science education, but climate change and climate science transcend any one discipline and should not be confined to just the science classroom.  Climate change education has emerged as an important issue in social studies classrooms, and collaborations between geoscience education and social studies education researchers are important in breaking down disciplinary walls.  This talk will present a case study of a collaboration between a geoscience education researcher and a social studies education researcher to develop materials to support high school social studies and science teachers in enacting classroom discussions on the issue of climate change. These discussions draw upon interdisciplinary knowledge and skills focused on supporting the use of appropriate deliberative processes. We piloted this lesson with both pre-service social studies and science teachers, who were asked to examine compelling questions related to climate change and then engage in civic deliberation in order to evaluate the role of policy across levels of scale in tackling this important public issue.  This pilot presents a model of how geoscience education researchers, social studies education researchers, and pre-service teachers can collaborate to break down disciplinary walls and provide new opportunities to forward climate change education in the K-12 classroom.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-414404

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