With the main goal of supporting geosciences education in Europe and beyond, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) Education Committee (EC) launched and support the Geoscience Education Field Officers (GEFO) programme. A GEFO is a teacher trainer that promotes hands-on workshops to geoscience teachers and pre-service teachers, from primary to secondary school, in his own country. Since 2019, a network of 11 EGU GEFO are working, initially with members from France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, later reinforced, in May 2022, with GEFO from Albania, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Beyond Europe GEFO programme is established in eight countries (Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia India, Malaysia, Morocco, Togo) and is supported by the International Union of Geological Sciences Commission on Geoscience Education (IUGS-COGE). Indicators as: a) number of workshops held, attending participants, and locations; b) workshop contents; c) teachers’ conferences attended and abstracts/papers published by GEFO about their activity; d) and an evaluation form provided to attending participants that allows to make a sample characterisation (teacher education establishments involved, gender, role, teaching years, professional position, school level, taught subjects) and appreciation of the interest of the workshops, have been used to assess the progress of the programme. The evaluation form was adapted from one used by the Earth Science Education Unit (University of Keele, UK). The assessment has brought some challenges particularly related to the application of the same evaluation form in different national educational systems/curricula, and with the encouragement of attends to fill in the form.

Geoscientists know that their scientific understanding of the Earth as a system is important for the sustainable development of planet Earth. In Germany they expressed their concern about the state of geoscience education in 1996 (Leipziger Erklärung) and in 2023 (Positionspapier der GEOUNION und des Dachverbandes der Geowissenschaften). Explicit geoscience education expertise is still lacking at all levels of the educational system: education research at the universities, teacher training, professional development of teachers, syllabus commissions.

In 2019 the European Geoscience Union - Education Commission (EGU-EC) launched an initiative by appointing Geoscience Education Field Officers (GEFO) to support science and geography teachers that are interested in teaching geosciences. The GEFO are trained to offer in service and pre service teacher training according the teacher training method developed by the Earth Science Education Unit originally based at Keele University (UK). It provides interactive hands-on workshops and access to a wealth of teaching resources that are freely available through a website. The workshops are evaluated by an online questionnaire. (Correia et al. 2020).

In 2022 the EGU-EC appointed a GEFO for Germany. Measures of cooperation have been established and first workshops conducted. Cooperation partners as well as German teachers show a high level of interest in the workshops. The workshop schedule will be explained and first evaluation results presented.

Source:

Correia, G. P. et al. (2020) Geoscience Education Field Officer international programme – the first year of activity (May 2019 – April 2020). ASE International. 10. 11-21.

There is an urgent need to include Earth systems sciences (ESS) in the school curricula in order to enable the next generation to understand that the Earth is a dynamic system and its global problems such as climate change or the sustainable use of georesources as discussed by the 2022 report of the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences.

Right now, geosciences are not explicit part of the German school curriculum. Basic knowledge of the earth sciences is currently only taught in geography classes and occasionally in physics, chemistry and biology classes. But geography and all science teachers do not receive qualified training in Earth system sciences as part of their studies. While they rely on textbooks for their teaching, geoscientific texts and illustrations in many textbooks currently used in schools contain errors, especially concerning the dynamic of the solid Earth.

The German Geological Society (DGGV) currently develops a series of about 10 minutes long educational videos with text and figures on the Earth system on its website, in which basic geoscientific knowledge is conveyed. The videos are aimed specifically at teachers in schools, but also at students and interested laypeople. First tests in school education settings by individual teachers have revealed that they are a useful and welcome aid for teachers in their classrooms.

GEOWiki@LMU is more than just a visible website on the Internet. Various different activities are going on behind the scenes. All students, from the first semester up to advanced classes, independent from their thematic specialization have the opportunity to enhance their knowledge in research areas of their choice and even to conduct their own research as part of the GEOWiki-Team.

One outstanding example is the StudForschung program of the LMU, where contents for the new branch GEOWiki@Schule were developed. We are happy to announce that also student teachers work together with their colleagues from geoscience to develop the course. Together they gain insights into geoscientific topics and methods and get prepared for their future teaching activities. In addition, the content developed together with the instructions can be applied by the teachers and pupils promoting the knowledge in geosciences in different school subjects.

We work with a variety of tools to realize our own ideas and bring them into practice. The website of the GEOWiki@LMU is meanwhile very broad: in addition to the classic webpages we offer an OPEN-VHB course to teach geoscientific content. The interdisciplinary team developed a wide variety of content, which are always interlinked. Our didactic goal is to learn with fun and motivation independent whether you are a user of the website or active developer of the content. We invested an immeasurable amount of heart and soul in this project and we are excited to continue the journey of education.