Trainee Teacher Experience in Geoscience Education: Can We Do Better?

Some organizations have warned that most secondary school curricula do not include a substantial geology component. Inadequate geological knowledge affects not only university students but also the majority of citizens who finish their secondary studies without having learned any basic geological concepts. The insufficient geological training of pre-university teachers who are later expected to teach some geology generates a certain degree of insecurity and fear about teaching geology. Therefore, it is imperative to improve training for trainee teachers to replace usual ways of thinking about geology teaching with new approaches that promote significant geological learning. This research has a dual objective: first, we analyze whether trainee teachers’ theses include geoscience content; second, we explore how innovative ideas and practices can be translated for educational purposes and to promote geologically significant learning. Our findings reveal that environmental impacts, plate tectonics and the hydrosphere are concurrent topics in the geosciences. However, trainee teachers in Spain prefer to develop biology units because many of them have training in bioscience fields of knowledge. Traditional education based on the exposition of learning material by the teacher was identified as the main learning environment developed in the trainee teachers’ theses. However, the number of innovations incorporated into trainee teachers’ theses has increased. Through this process, trainee teachers have a critical role to play: encouraging their future secondary students to develop geology knowledge.