The program is designed to appeal to everyone from the instructor attending their first Earth education-themed meeting, to experienced STEM education researchers, to administrators who want to better support students in their programs. Among many options, participants can learn about new teaching approaches, discover opportunities to get involved in research programs, prepare for an academic career, or discuss how to approach teaching and learning challenges in their classroom.

Themes

The Rendezvous’ combination of workshops, posters, talks, round-table discussions, and plenary presentations is designed to help guide participants through a suite of interrelated challenges that are characteristic of Earth Education in schools, colleges, and universities today by:

• providing instructors who are teaching Earth topics at all educational levels (K-16) with examples of instructional strategies that have been shown to improve student learning
• addressing teaching challenges specific to particular settings (e.g., large classes, labs, field work), topics (e.g., teaching about sustainability, atmospheric science), or skills (e.g., spatial reasoning)
• developing students’ competency in a range of geoscientific tasks that involve higher order skills such as systems thinking, data analysis and quantitative skills
• supporting instructors and administrators in creating lessons and programming to increase the number and diversity of students who learn about Earth
  helping graduate students and post-docs prepare for an academic career in Earth-related disciplines
• collaborating with colleagues across the disciplines to situate learning about Earth in a societal context
• supporting current and future teachers in successfully implementing the Next Generation Science Standards
• pursuing education research that supports our ability to address these challenges

Program

The Earth Educators’ Rendezvous program will bring together these themes into a rich tapestry of workshops, contributed talks and posters, panel discussions, and plenary sessions, and working groups. Drawing across the work currently taking place in geoscience, environmental, and sustainability education, meeting attendees will have the opportunity to learn broadly, focus on a particular issue or challenge, or something in between.