Conference Agenda

Geoscience instructors often struggle to determine how best to assess critical thinking within the discipline. Traditional examinations can effectively measure content knowledge, but they provide only limited insight into students’ abilities to apply knowledge to solve problems. One promising approach is to use StoryMaps, which is a digital tool within Esri’s ArcGIS suite for geospatial analysis. The tool provides a platform for students to express complex ideas through digital storytelling and visualization. A StoryMap is valuable for sharing, collaborating, and receiving feedback on semester-long projects through the fusion of maps, spatial data, and multimedia. To test the digital storytelling approach in geoscience education, our team taught two postsecondary courses on water and watersheds that used StoryMaps as the final student project. Students completed shorter assignments throughout the course (e.g., data analyses, critical scientific article summaries, maps, photos, reflective essays) that could be incorporated into their StoryMap. Course assessments included rubrics to evaluate students’ integrated learning. For the educational research, a small group instructional diagnosis and surveys measured students’ perceptions of their learning and the StoryMap approach. The results showed that students valued the opportunity to learn geosciences through multiple knowledge domains, and student survey responses showed that StoryMaps helped center students’ personal interest in the course material. The project findings align with other studies of digital storytelling in science education, which indicate that the outward-facing nature of a culminating digital product motivates students to do quality work and de-centers a final grade as a driving force for intentional participation.

This workshop explores the use of models in lower and upper secondary geography education. The workshop begins by introducing central theoretic foundations, which are illustrated through concrete examples. A particular focus is placed on the Stormwater Floodplain Simulation System, a hands-on model for simulating river flood events.

Participants will put the model into practice and subsequently reflect on its use in classroom settings. The example serves to highlight both the potential of models and the necessity of their critical reflection in educational contexts.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
a) identify the competences to be developed through the use of models,
b) provide didactically grounded legitimizations for the potentials and challenges of using models in geography education, as well as
c) critically assess the limitations of models in terms of their informative value.

The transmission of geological content in children's media is a challenge due to the abstract nature of many geological concepts, being difficult for early childhood and young audiences. However, children's media play a pivotal role in early childhood earth education, having a lasting impact on children's understanding of geosciences. This study examines how geological topics are represented in selected popular children's media and explores the epistemic structures emerging from these representations. A qualitative content analysis based on Philipp Mayring's methodology was applied to a targeted sample of children's media: Pixi books, Benny Blu, GEOlino, GEOlino Mini, GEOextra, and National Geographic Kids.

The focus of the analysis was on the thematic emphasis, the forms of presentation, and the intensity of scientific knowledge transfer. The results show that geological topics in these media are predominantly conveyed through isolated phenomena, e.g. dinosaurs and fossils. Fundamental geological concepts and systemic connections, such as the Earth system understanding, are underrepresented. Media aimed at younger audiences primarily use narrative and visual forms of representation, while media targeting older children offer greater content depth, but do not integrate a full systemic approach of geological processes.

The study reveals that the geological content presented in children's media is highly simplified and fragmented, leading to a limited transmission of an integrative and systemic understanding of geology. New perspectives are opend by the results for a didactic development of geological knowledge transfer in children's media, especially with regard to the systemic representation of the Earth as a complex, interdependent system.

Geoscience is rarely taught as a standalone subject in German schools, with most content embedded within geography curricula. As a result, key topics such as plate tectonics, the rock cycle, and natural hazards are often addressed only briefly. This situation is further challenged because many teachers lack a geological background, which can influence both the time devoted to these topics and the teaching approaches applied.

At the same time, the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the geosciences provides strong opportunities for cross-curricular integration. While many initiatives focus on strengthening the connections with natural sciences, links with other disciplines – particularly arts – offer considerable potential to enhance engagement, foster creativity, and deepen understanding of complex Earth system processes, especially among students without a strong scientific orientation.

Over the past 3 years, the School Lab (Schülerforschungszentrum) Nordhausen, based at the University of Applied Science Nordhausen, the South Harz Nature Park (Naturpark Südharz), and the Nordhausen Youth Art School have collaboratively developed and implemented a series of projects for schools and holiday programs. These initiatives combine (geo)sciences, arts, and environmental education to foster curiosity and literacy in engaging and accessible ways, aligning with and supporting the targets of the Education for Sustainable Development goals.

This contribution presents selected examples of these projects and discusses their educational potential. It also provides an overview of adaptable classroom activities based on the Earth Learning Ideas repository, including modifications tailored to Thuringian (central Germany) contexts. Initial feedback from teacher training workshops (June 2026) will be included to the discussion.

In 2024, the world experienced its hottest year since weather records began. Global temperatures were 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. Nevertheless, in the media and in their personal lives, pupils encounter people who deny climate change; perhaps they themselves are not yet convinced.

By clearly communicating that climate change is a scientific consensus, it is possible to convince people that climate change is a real phenomenon. When respondents of an international study were convinced by the concerns expressed by the scientific community, they too became concerned about climate change (Većkalov et al. 2024).

We report on a lesson designed to enable pupils to work independently with scientific data, thereby helping them to form their own opinions on the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature in the atmosphere. In this way, they become familiar with original sources for climate change data freely available online. The lesson plan we are presenting was developed as part of the ERASMUS project ‘EASE’, that aims to make it easier for schools to access real measurement data and to provide teaching materials for integration into individual lessons (Info: https://www.ac-nice.fr/ease/project-information).

We will describe the challenges that teaching on the base of real scientific data presents to teachers and illustrate learning outcomes using pupils’ comments.

There is an urgent need to include Earth sciences in the school curricula in order to enable the next generation to understand the basics of the Earth as a dynamic system and its global problems such as climate change or the sustainable use of georesources. In order to support school and student training but also for people who are generally interested in natural sciences and in particular in geoscience, a series of websites and educational videos has been created over the last four years. They are part of the collection of teaching materials that can be found on the DGGV website. Educational videos on the YouTube channel "Lehrvideos System Erde" (Educational videos on the Earth System) are integrated into the web pages. All texts, images and movie clips used in the videos can be downloaded free of charge and for free use. This web-based teaching material is particularly suitable for teachers in schools, but is also intended for students and interested laypeople.

The series is under construction, with 23 websites and videos completed so far. The videos are accessible via the website. All chapters are available in German, English and Spanish language. The 23 completed chapters cover the structure of the Earth, isostasy, the development of the oceanic crust and lithospheric mantle, divergent plate boundaries, transform faults, the Earth´s magnetic field, and the geometry of plate movements. One additional explanatory video concerning the definition of the term “Geologie” is only available in German. More websites and videos will follow soon.