In the decade since the 2007 "JGE" special issue on broadening participation, much work has been done to draw new voices into the geosciences, and the number of students from underrepresented groups graduating with geoscience degrees has grown. However, the rate of increase is not yet large enough that geoscience demographics represent…

A future instructor's teaching beliefs contribute to whether they will use research-validated teaching strategies. We surveyed and interviewed potential future geoscience faculty as represented by graduate students and post-doctoral scholars to characterize their teaching beliefs, evaluate changes in those beliefs over time, and identify…

Research has shown that modern courses and programs designed to foster critical thinking vary in both content and delivery, in turn leading to differences in their effectiveness. Few studies have investigated critical thinking among nontraditional students at community colleges taking STEM courses, especially within the geosciences. Furthermore,…

Increasing diversity in the geosciences has remained a challenge, despite large investments made by federal agencies in minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and historically black universities and colleges (HBCUs). With increasing challenges associated with climate and environmental change and severe and frequent natural disasters that…

To address complex geoscience questions, communities with a variety of experiences and perspectives are needed in local workplaces and institutions across academia and government. To achieve this goal, geoscience needs leaders who are champions of diversity and who have positive attitudes toward others and act upon these attitudes to become change…

The geosciences consist of multiple disciplines including geology, oceanography, and atmospheric science. Significant work expended to understand spatial thinking skills important to teaching and learning geology has advanced our ability to support students in geology courses and to achieve increased student success, retention, and diversity in…

Applying virtual reality (VR) technology to geoscience classrooms provides a new way to engage students. Visualizing geological information in 360-degree allows students to experience processes of the Earth and makes them feel like they are outside the classroom. This paper describes a convenient technique for making 360-degree VR environments…

Increasingly more students with disabilities, including autistic or otherwise neurodiverse students, are studying for degrees in STEM field subjects. In recent years, there has been an increased effort from the geoscience education community to make teaching more accessible and inclusive to these students. However, much of the literature on this…

This study investigates students' conceptions of the causes and processes that form eskers and erratics, types of glacial and glaciofluvial landforms which to date have been little researched in geoscience education. The data collected for the study included 134 responses to an assignment completed by 12- to 13-year-old students in the Swedish…

In response to calls for reformed teaching practices in college STEM labs and courses, and to support graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in their general teaching responsibilities, other STEM disciplines have recently increased their focus on GTA training and preparation. However, current practices in GTA training in the geosciences and…

The adoption of enrollment-based budgeting at many institutions poses serious problems for geoscience programs that have been facing enrollment challenges in recent years, particularly in response to drops in the price of oil and gas. This commentary describes the impetus for, and results of, the Pathways to the Geosciences program at Texas…

Community colleges enroll almost half of U.S. undergraduates and were predicted to produce 12% of the workforce for STEM professions in 2018. Half of these students are the first in their families to attend college and therefore are more likely unfamiliar with the steps required to transfer to four-year universities or internship programs.…

Working memory is a cognitive system that allows for the simultaneous storage and processing of active information. While working memory has been implicated as an important element for success in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, its specific role in geoscience learning is not fully understood. The major goal of…

COVID-19 has created challenges and opportunities across higher education, with flow-on effects for teaching, research, and publishing. Using an archival case study approach, we analyzed 543 Journal of Geoscience Education submissions from 2018 to 2020 to determine potential impacts of the pandemic on our authors and reviewers. Trends in…

Many geoscience phenomena cannot be perceived at human temporal or spatial scales. As a consequence, we can only understand many processes that drive geological phenomena through analogical reasoning. Building deep conceptual understanding requires instruction that activates the appropriate source analogs and allows students to build useful…