Experience with geographic information systems (GIS) can improve students’
spatial skills and provide a foundation for success in STEM (Jant et al., 2019). Researchers and
educators co-designed a GIS unit in which high school students learned to use ArcGIS software
by exploring geospatial patterns in their local communities. Across three teachers, 134 students
participated in the unit and completed a geospatial problem-solving assessment. Students’
performance on the assessment significantly increased from pre- to post-test. Students whose
teachers had more GIS experience and completed graded GIS assessments scored higher on
geospatial assessments and used more spatial language than students whose teachers had less
GIS experience and graded on participation. Students’ expectancy, value, and cost of computer
science varied across teachers, and may be linked to students’ ability to devote time to mapbuilding and their engagement with a GIS careers guide. We discuss the impacts of teacher
training and lesson implementation on students’ geospatial thinking.
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This content will become publicly available on May 1, 2025
"Off the bench": three case studies of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) integration in high school chemistry instruction
Across Texas, Washington, and Pennsylvania, three university teams worked with teachers at three high schools to integrate geographic information systems (GIS) and other geospatial tools into chemistry lessons as part of a larger, multi-disciplinary teacher professional development initiative. Each university followed a specific design model of socio-environmental science investigations (SESI) in their professional development and curriculum development processes. Each teacher’s work is presented as a case with distinct school contexts, professional development experiences, classroom implementation outcomes, and reflections after implementation. Cross-case findings include variability in teachers’ adoption processes, the importance of cross-site collaboration, and the ability of geospatial tools to bring chemistry topics “off the bench” and into students’ thinking about their world. These cases present an advance in the curricular reach of GIS, which to date has not been broadly used in high school chemistry instruction. Further, the cases illustrate examples of the teachers’ geospatial science pedagogical content knowledge.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1949388
- PAR ID:
- 10523497
- Publisher / Repository:
- Association of Science Teacher Education
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Innovations in Science Teacher Education
- ISSN:
- not found
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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