Co-creating curriculum-aligned geoscience resources with teachers, for teachers

Geoscience is vital to our society’s sustainable future. In Ireland, students are introduced to geoscience at Post-Primary level in the non-compulsory subject of geography, yet there are limited resources available to assist geography teachers on their teaching of current  topics and developments in geoscience. To address this, iCRAG (the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre in Applied Geosciences) and Geological Survey Ireland, part of the Government of Ireland, developed the Geoscience for Leaving Certificate Geography Continuing Professional Development Course. The course was piloted in 2021, continued in 2022, and due to successful outcomes, it is planned to run in the future. In this presentation we will outline the design and delivery of the course, and share our experience, evaluation data and learnings. The CPD course pairs teachers with geoscience practitioners  to co-create a curriculum-aligned geoscience educational resource. The participants are given freedom over the topic and nature of the resource but it should assist in the teaching of  the Irish Leaving Certificate (Key Stage 5, UK or grades 11-12, USA). In the co-creative partnership, teachers contribute their curriculum expertise and pedagogical experience, and geoscientists contribute their subject knowledge and current research. The course runs over six evening sessions every two weeks and it is split into four different phases – learning, design, development, and presenting. So far, the CPD course has resulted in the co-creation of twelve resources: one field guide, one story map, two module plans and eight lesson plans, which are publicly available. Furthermore, selected evaluation data from the 2021 iteration of the course shows that students’ ability to identify geoscience related subjects within the geography curriculum had increased by 33%, and 100% of the teachers that attended felt more confident in teaching geoscience subjects after taking part. We hope to present further evaluation data from the 2022 iteration at EGU 2023.