ABSTRACT

An international survey of geoscience education has been carried out jointly by UNESCO and the International Geoscience Education Organisation (IGEO) to address the question of ‘How does school-level Earth science education compare across the globe? The survey gathered data from experts in 51 countries, comprising more than half the global population. Most countries (75%) had national standards covering Earth science but these were not followed or are absent in more than half the countries surveyed. Only around 25% of the countries with standardised assessments have Earth science-specific questions. Most teachers of Earth science are non-specialist teachers, whilst support of these teachers through courses and professional development is generally low, with very little financial support provided. Earth science teaching materials are reported to be generally of moderate to poor quality. However, there is good support globally for informal Earth science education and there are enthusiastic groups of educators attempting to address the rather bleak formal education situation. Strategies being used include the publication of an international syllabus with free-to-download supporting textbooks, websites of high-quality interactive teaching materials, national champions promoting interactive geoscience education, and global support for these initiatives.

抽象的

教科文组织和国际地球科学教育组织（IGEO）联合进行了一项地球科学教育的国际调查，以解决“全球学校水平的地球科学教育如何比较？该调查收集了来自51个国家（占全球人口的一半以上）的专家的数据。大多数国家（75％）都有涵盖地球科学的国家标准，但在超过一半的接受调查的国家中，并未遵循或没有遵循这些国家标准。只有经过标准化评估的国家/地区中，只有大约25％的国家/地区提出了针对地球科学的问题。地球科学的大多数教师都是非专业教师，而通过课程和专业发展对这些教师的支持通常很低，几乎没有提供财政支持。据报告，地球科学教材的质量一般中等到较差。但是，全球范围内对非正式地球科学教育提供了很好的支持，并且有一批热情的教育工作者试图解决相当惨淡的正规教育情况。所采用的策略包括出版包含免费下载的辅助教科书的国际教学大纲，高质量的交互式教学材料网站，促进交互式地球科学教育的全国冠军，以及对这些倡议的全球支持。