----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2011 5:33
PM
Subject: GSA session on temporal and
spatial learning
Hello all,
Tim Shipley, Steve Semken and I are convening a session at GSA next fall
on temporal and spatial thinking in the geosciences. We hope that many of you
will submit abstracts on your work to this session, and that you will help us
spread the word about the session. Here are the details:
Title:
T167. Time, Events, and Places:
Understanding Temporal and Spatial Learning in Geoscience
Education
Students have trouble visualizing large magnitudes and
reasoning about events and processes over large temporal and spatial scales.
Part of the problem arises when the cognitive mechanisms that serve us well
for human scale reasoning are used to interpret phenomena and structures in
time and space that dwarf human experience, as is routine in the Earth and
space science research and education. This session will present work on how
humans think about events, processes, histories, and familiar spaces. This
cognitive science research offers an important perspective on the difficulties
that students encounter in learning about time and space and reasoning about
spatiotemporal concepts in the context of geoscience education. The session
will combine basic work on learning with work on educating about deep time and
change in formal and informal learning settings.
We hope to see you there!
All the best,
Carol
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Carol Ormand
Science Education Resource Center
Carleton College
Northfield, MN 55057
(608) 213-1618