Understanding When and How Geoscientists Build Universal Skills and Competencies

Abstract:

Geoscience educators and employers understand the pressing needs for the future workforce to be well-prepared in universal skills and competencies. At the undergraduate and graduate level today, most programs do a good job of this preparation, and employers are finding qualified applicants. However, with workforce needs in the geosciences projected to steadily outstrip supply in coming decades, and with many employers having to do substantial additional training on arrival for new hires, research informing curriculum design and skills development needs to be a priority. The projected retirement of seasoned professionals exacerbates this need and underscores the need to better understand the nature and structure of geoscience skills and competencies at the expert level.

 A workshop on Synthesizing Geoscience Education Research at the inaugural Earth Educator’s Rendezvous began work on assembling a community-wide inventory of research progress. Groups began an assessment of our understanding of key skills in the geosciences as well as curricular approaches to maximize teaching effectiveness and recruitment and retention. It is clear that we have made basic progress on understanding spatial and temporal thinking, as well as systems thinking and geologic problem solving. However, most of this research is in early stages, limited to local populations, disciplines or contexts. Curricular innovations in the integration of quantitative, field-specific and computational techniques are also mostly local or limited in scope. Many programs also locally incorporate an explicit non-technical component, e.g. writing, business, and legal content or experience in team-based project-driven work.

Despite much good practitioner wisdom, and a small but growing research base on effectiveness and best practices, we have much yet to learn about geoscience education, especially at the graduate and professional level. We remain far from a universal understanding of these skills and competencies, let alone how they should be most effectively taught to all geoscience students. We do understand universal geoscience skills and competencies better than ever before, but as a community we have a long way yet to go to construct and implement a broad strategy for meeting the geoscience workforce needs for the decades ahead.