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Introductory geology: Is there a common language?
GSA TODAY | OCTOBER 2015 Karen M. Kortz, Community College of Rhode Island, Physics
Dept., 1762 Louisquisset Pike, Lincoln, Rhode Island 02865, USA,
kkortz@ccri.edu; Amber R. Caulkins, University of Rhode Island,
Dept. of Communication Studies, 101 Davis Hall, 10 Lippitt Road,
Kingston, Rhode Island 02881, USA
INTRODUCTION
Geologic terms provide a common language for communi-
cating geoscience concepts. Because introductory geoscience
students can learn only a limited number of these terms, ques-
tions arise about which terms are essential to learn and if there is
agreement between geoscientists on these terms.
Students are frequently exposed to terms through their text-
books, and previous studies have examined vocabulary in texts,
although not college-level geology textbooks. In a high school
earth science textbook, Groves (1995) found a rate of 4.45 scien-
tific terms per page. Zechmeister and Zechmeister (2000)
compared ten college-level introductory psychology textbooks
and counted 2,505 unique terms in the glossaries, with <3% of
terms common to all ten glossaries.
An extensive use of geologic terms in introductory textbooks
may lead to difficulties in learning. The limited working-memory
capacity of most novices results in the ability to attend to only a
small amount of new information while reading, which decreases
text comprehension (Sweller et al., 1998; Cain et al., 2004). If
students are using their mental capabilities to comprehend
unknown terms, their cognitive systems could become over-
loaded, and deep cognitive processing may not happen. Students
may use geologic terms without fully understanding their under-
lying concepts (Libarkin and Kurdziel, 2006; Kortz and Murray,
2009; Clark et al., 2011). In addition, students have less facility
than experts in extracting the relevant information and seeing the
big picture (e.g., Caillies et al., 2002; Patrick et al., 2005).
Therefore, students may focus on small details, such as geologic
terms, instead of using those terms to construct a holistic concep-
tual understanding. Students may then have an illusion of deep
understanding because they can recognize vocabulary words
(Graesser and Forsyth, 2013).
Extensively incorporating terms may lead to unintended conse-
quences. For example, an emphasis on learning terms may
contribute to the misconception that science is a finished body of
knowledge requiring abundant memorization (Groves, 1995). In
addition, introducing large numbers of terms may lead to the
emphasis on a breadth instead of a depth of knowledge, contrary
to what has been recommended by education reformers
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(Bransford et al., 2000; Earth Science Literacy Initiative, 2009;
Next Generation Science Standards, 2014).
Since the copious use of terminology potentially affects student
learning, and limiting terminology requires knowing which terms
are most valued by geologists, we analyzed terms in college-level
introductory geology textbooks. In particular, we analyzed glos-
sary terms, comparing whether a common vocabulary exists
between the textbooks.
METHODS
We tabulated glossary terms in 16 introductory physical geology
textbooks. Minor variations in terms (e.g., “P-wave” and “P wave”)
between textbooks were combined into a common term that was
used during analysis. One author compiled terms, and the other
author confirmed the list.
RESULTS
Textbooks written by the same authors (e.g., essentials and full
versions) used a fairly consistent language, so we present the analysis
of only the full versions of ten textbooks. We note, however, that one
“essentials” textbook (Marshak, 2009) had more terms in the glos-
sary (1,435) than the “full” version (1,301 terms; Marshak, 2008).
We identified 2,776 individual, unique terms in the ten
full-version textbooks, averaging 678 terms per book glossary
(Table 1). To verify that the glossary terms matched the bolded
words in textbooks, we crosschecked 10% of the glossary words
and bolded words in a subset of three textbooks and found that
96.8% of bolded words (n = 210) were in the glossary, and 93.6%
of glossary terms (n = 203) were bolded. Italicized words
increased the total number of words emphasized in the text by
1.5 times, although they were not included in our analysis
because they were predominantly not in the glossary.
There was minimal overlap in glossary terms between the text-
books. Only 44 terms (1.6% of the unique terms) were common
to all ten textbooks. Examples of these 44 terms are abrasion,
barrier island, epicenter, igneous rock, joint, mantle, plate
tectonics, and volcano. Only 16.4% of terms are in five or more
textbooks, and over half of terms (55.3%) were unique to indi-
vidual textbooks. Examples of the 39.5% of terms unique to
Marshak (2008) include dormant volcano, olistotrome, sabkah,
snotite, and topsoil, whereas examples of the 8.5% of terms
unique to Murck et al. (2010) include fractionation, kingdom, and
seismic discontinuity. Unique terms may be used in other text-
books, but if they were not in the glossary, they were not included
in this study.