AGU Fall Meeting
December 13 – 17, 2010
San Francisco, CA
COSEE-Themed Sessions
ED 20: Broader Impacts: Successful Models and Measuring Their Effectiveness
Oral Session Co-conveners: Gail Scowcroft, Linda Duguay
Poster Session Co-conveners: Liesl Hotaling, Susan Buhr
Conveying scientific research to the public continues to increase in importance to scientists and society. Scientists are required to include broader impact activities to obtain or leverage funding, strengthen status within peer groups, and enhance professional development of graduate students. In addition, scientists are often intrinsically motivated to share their research with the world. This session will solicit examples of transferable and tractable activities, such as work with citizen scientists groups, diverse audiences, online resources and activities, the media, and formal and informal science education institutions. Contributions which focus on methods for gauging activity efficacy are of special interest.
ED 02: Traditional Knowledge and Geoscience Research and Education
‘Traditional knowledge’ is the totality of experiential knowledge of the natural environment of a people, acquired over time, and passed from generation to generation such that it may have become part of a people’s cultural identity. Scientists and educators trained in Western schools of thought, are beginning to recognize the merit of multiple approaches to inquiry in the generation of new knowledge. Like modern scientists, indigenous peoples collect and analyze data. Traditional knowledge often provides contextual or baseline data that may otherwise be unavailable to the researcher. In the classroom, respect for and the incorporation of traditional knowledge into science education makes it relevant to the learner.
Strategies for the incorporation of traditional knowledge into research may include simply documenting and/or translating the available information, often entirely oral; or fostering collaborations by encouraging the recording of observations by native observers. Tribal elders may be called upon to assist with infusing a curriculum with traditional, place-based knowledge, and also assist with modeling the teaching and learning methods used to preserve and transmit the knowledge. This session will explore strategies used by researchers and educators to meet this challenge.
