Page 168 - GIS for Science, Volume 3 Preview

EVOLUTION OF STUDENTS’ SPATIAL SKILLS
How does a student become a GIS professional, especially one that uses GIS as part of the scientific endeavor? Most children today don’t grow up dreaming of making maps and performing spatial analysis for a living. In many US schools, geography is almost an afterthought. But in Virginia, a unique partnership between high schools and James Madison University (JMU) is inspiring students to learn skills that prepare them for college and careers related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). For more than 15 years, the program’s geospatial approach has inspired young people to embrace STEM learning in college and beyond. Research about the impact of the Geospatial Semster (GSS), including brain scans of students in the program, has revealed promising results that warrant more study.
Two examples will help illustrate the success of this program. The first story is about Becky Schneider, who attended a suburban Washington, DC, high school and originally wanted to be a choir teacher. The second is about Drew Mehfoud, who attended a high school south of Richmond, Virginia, and planned to become a pediatrician. Instead, both shifted their focus to geospatial technology and chose careers as geographic information system (GIS) professionals. Schneider today is a geospatial analyst with Dewberry Engineers, and Mehfoud is a GIS technician in the environmental division of Timmons Group.
Looking back, both credit their careers in large part to high school coursework that supported scientific inquiry using geospatial technologies. Schneider said that her high school has offered a course in geospatial technology since the mid-2000s. The idea of taking such a class intrigued her, but she had no idea what to expect. But once she began, Schneider was “amazed by the functionality of GIS software and the wide variety of career possibilities that would be plausible.” Mehfoud’s high school also offered a GIS-based course to seniors for more than a decade. His desire to get involved led him to pester guidance counselors so he could take the class a year early as a junior. He enjoyed it so much, he returned for a second year, serving as a teaching assistant to his classmates. Taking that class and an advanced placement environmental science course put him on the career path he’s followed ever since.
These classes opened a new world of possibilities that led to geospatially focused college degrees for Schneider, at JMU and Mehfoud at Virginia Tech. But what kind of high school class has this sort of impact on students, opening their eyes to possibilities once hidden in plain sight? And what can we learn about the impact of such a class on how students think and reason?
The class in question is called the Geospatial Semester (GSS), a joint effort between the School of Integrated Sciences at JMU and high school districts across Virginia.1 The class introduces students to the array of opportunities provided by geospatial technologies. This chapter will 1) discuss the impact of this class on students’ spatial and scientific problem-solving skills, 2) review the history and impact of the GSS on the thousands of students who have participated, and 3) present the results of a multiyear research study measuring how the class affected students’ skills in spatial thinking and scientific reasoning.
Larger context
What impact does the extended use of GIS have on students? Many of us have long advocated its use in K-12 schools, primarily because of intriguing anecdotes and our own experiences. Unfortunately, relatively little research has been done to date on this topic. Prior work focused either on student content knowledge2,3 or on changes in standardized test scores.4 As a result, we know a lot about why it can be challenging to bring these technologies to K-12 schools5,6 but have relatively little research to show why it’s worthwhile.
We wanted to see if using geospatial tecnhology in school supported students’ thinking and scientific problem-solving skills. If we had this evidence, we could make a compelling case to include geospatial technology in the K-12 curriculum. It would also foster a broader discussion about the research agenda for geospatial technologies in education.7 Working with researchers at Northwestern, Georgetown, Dartmouth, and American Universities, we’ve tried to do just that. Here’s our story and what we know so far.
Collaborating with Michael Charles, a longtime professor at Pacific University in Oregon who died in 2020, we began by evaluating GSS student final projects to assess how well the projects demonstrated competence in GIS and applying spatial analysis. The next section presents sample student projects and illustrates the range of student topics, from the hyperlocal to the global. Many of the projects are science-based and driven by student interest. Few of them would fit into any standard science class currently offered in US high schools. No project is perfect, but these projects suggest what high school students can accomplish when they are given the time and opportunity to follow their interests with a spatial perspective.
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