Page 62 - Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century

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Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
... Geology graduates need to possess capabilities in making observations and predicting rock and mineral properties using hand specimens, microscopes and laboratory data, but more importantly their natural state
out in the field.
Transforming applied geology teaching and learning
Geology – the study of the Earth, its origin and history,
its processes, and the rocks and minerals from which it is composed – is very much an observational and historical transdisciplinary field of science (King 2008; Semken et al. 2017). As a result of this, Geology borrows from the more fundamental disciplines of science such as Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and even Biology. Due to its observational nature, teaching and learning in Geology is perhaps best achieved and facilitated through place-based education. Smith (2002) broadly describes place-based education as teaching and learning grounded ‘in local phenomena and students’ lived experiences’. According
to Semken et al. (2017), place-based Geology education
is a ‘situated, context-rich, transdisciplinary teaching
and learning modality distinguished by its unequivocal relationship to place’. The historical part derives from one of the main principles of Geology, Uniformitarianism; this principle states that processes occurring today have been in operation since the beginning of time (i.e., the present is the key to the past).
In addition to fundamental geological concepts and principles,
Geology graduates need to possess capabilities in making observations and predicting rock and mineral properties using hand specimens, microscopes and laboratory data, but more importantly in their
natural state out in the field. To emphasise this point, each level of
our three-year undergraduate degree, and the honours level, includes field-based standalone modules during which students are trained to determine properties based on experiencing rocks in their natural state. To that end, our graduates need not conceive Geology as an abstract concept. Thus, when we teach Geology, we strive to familiarise our students with the different mineral deposits and rocks within their
mmediate surroundings, and in commercial operations (e.g., mining),
n which they are likely to work and/or conduct research. By including and incorporating local phenomena, an inadvertent but welcome consequence of place-based education, particularly within the context of the South African higher education sector, is curriculum decolonisation.