The Role of Scholarly Publication in Geocognition and Discipline-Based Geoscience Education Research

Abstract

Geoscience has a long history of scholarly publication about education and learning. Over time, this work has covered both pedagogical and research findings. Pedagogical findings, related to educational settings, may be most clearly classified as “geoscience education,” while research findings in any setting can be grouped under the heading of “geocognition.” A new domain of scholarship in geocognition, the interdisciplinary study of how people perceive and understand Earth, has clearly emerged. Publication of research into cognitive, affective, or psychomotor processes that relate to human interaction with the Earth, including in educational settings, is occurring in a wide range of journals. Referencing rates within exemplar journals, such as the Journal of Geoscience Education, indicate both areas that the community values, such as learning science, as well as disconnects between geocognition and related communities in other sciences. Research findings need to be communicated among geocognition researchers, to similar scholars in other science domains, and to geoscientists in general. Interdisciplinary communication and oversight may be the most effective pathway to ensuring that geocognition research disseminated to broader scientific communities is of the highest quality.