Academic provenance: Investigation of pathways that lead students into the geosciences

Pathways that lead students into the geosciences as a college major have not been fully explored in the current literature, despite the recent studies on the “geoscience pipeline model.” Anecdotal evidence suggests low quality geoscience curriculum in K-12 education, lack of visibility of the discipline and lack of knowledge about geoscience careers contribute to low geoscience enrollments at universities. This study investigated the reasons why college students decided to major in the geosciences. Students\u27 interests, experiences, motivations and desired future careers were examined to develop a pathway model. In addition, self-efficacy was used to inform pathway analyses, as it is an influential factor in academic major and career choice. These results and interpretations have strong implications for recruitment and retention in academia and industry. A semi-structured interview protocol was developed, which was informed by John Flanagan\u27s critical incident theory. The responses to this interview were used to identify common experiences that diverse students shared for reasons they became geoscience majors. Researchers used self-efficacy theory by Alfred Bandura to assess students\u27 pathways. Seventeen undergraduate geoscience majors from two U.S. Midwest research universities were sampled for cross-comparison and analysis. Qualitative analyses led to the development of six categorical steps for the geoscience pathway. The six pathway steps are: innate attributes/interest sources, pre-college critical incidents, college critical incidents, current/near future goals, expected career attributes and desired future careers. Although, how students traversed through each step was unique for individuals, similar patterns were identified between different populations in our participants: Natives, Immigrants and Refugees. In addition, critical incidents were found to act on behavior in two different ways: to support and confirm decision-making behavior (supportive critical incidents) or to alter behavior as to change or make an initial decision (behavior altering critical incidents). Comparing and contrasting populations\u27 distinct pathways resulted in valuable discussion for recruitment and retention initiatives for the geoscience

Development and Validation of the Geoscience Quantitative Preparation Survey (GQPS)

We have created a new survey instrument for national implementation, based on the results of our recent qualitative investigations, the Career Masters Survey from the American Geosciences Institute, and the suite of career skills recommended by the Summit on the Future of Undergraduate Geoscience Education initiative. The Geoscience Quantitative Preparation Survey (GQPS) is designed for geoscientists – geologists only during initial pilot testing – who are 3-10 years removed from BS/BA graduation with 3-7 years of related work experience. The GQPS is designed to measure (1) self-efficacy in a variety of quantitative skills, (2) whether participants use these various quantitative skills at work and/or (3) outside of work, and (4) whether participants are satisfied with the problem solving, quantitative communication, and computer-based skills they received during their undergraduate education, both in their geoscience departments and (5) at their universities outside of their departments. This presentation will focus primarily on the background, development, and validation of the GQPS survey instrument. The GQPS was loosely based on a medical patient numeracy test, the Subjective Numeracy Scale (Fagerlin et al 2007). We took the general questions of the SNS – designed to determine whether medical patients could understand quantitative instructions involving things like medications – and expanded the level of math skills discussed while re-framing the questions for a geoscience context. Validation of the GQPS is a three-part process. First, the survey was reviewed iteratively by a panel of three survey experts. Second, a group of ten graduate student volunteers took the draft version of the instrument while giving an oral account of any confusion or inconsistency noted. Third, we will validate quantitatively using the official responses to the survey and will include responses for validation from participants that fall outside the target range of experience and/or years-from-graduation