Geoscience Education Field Officer international programme: The first year of activity (May 2019 - April 2020)

Abstract

The Geoscience Education Field Officer (FO) programme was launched in 2019 by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) Committee on Education (CoE). The initiative began in six countries: France, Italy, India, Morocco, Portugal and Spain. Supported by EGU, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and the International Geoscience Education Organisation (IGEO), this international programme has the objective of providing professional development in geoscience teaching to teachers and future teachers, from primary to secondary schools, who have limited or no academic background in Earth Science, or who need training courses in practical geology teaching. The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of the outcomes of the EGU-IUGS/IGEO FO programme one year after its launch (May 2019 – April 2020). The methodology is based on both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data provided by two instruments: the FO report presented to the EGU CoE and the teachers’ workshop evaluation form. During the first year of activity, this project involved 379 workshop participants, from 188 different teacher education establishments, in a total of 21 workshops performed in the different countries. Also, FOs have presented four oral communications at teachers’ conferences and published two abstracts to promote and disseminate information about this programme. The participants who completed the workshop evaluation form revealed a high level of interest in this kind of workshop and some declared that they were the best workshops that they had ever attended in their professional careers, and hoped to attend future similar workshops.