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          Barton (2016), “It would be difficult to   must adapt our courses to prepare them.   Banilower, E.R., Smith, P.S., Weiss, I.R.,
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          overstate the importance that discourse is   Although our classes have become more   A.M., 2013, Report of the 2012 national survey
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          science instruction” (p. 1128). Discourse   fifteen years, we have been slow to take a   Horizon Research Inc., 309 p., http://
          involves eliciting student ideas, prompt-  systems approach, make strong connec-  horizon-research.com/NSSME/2012-nssme/
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          compare their ideas and explain their rea-  research-based strategies that are shown    Benjamin, A.S., and Tullis, J., 2010, What makes
          soning, and situating the classroom as a   to improve learning.         distributed practice effective?: Cognitive
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          make sense of the Earth system.    opportunity yet … to educate [our] citi-  doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2010.05.004.
            Since 2004, the use of small-group dis-  zens about the complex and critical issues   Cheesman, K., French, D., Cheesman, I., Swails,
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          courses (Fig. 1), with ~35% of instructors   discipline-based educational research    p. 516–522, https://doi.org/10.1641/B570609.
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          nique at least weekly. Whole-class discus-  work in the classroom (McConnell et al.,   Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate
          sion is used somewhat less frequently (Fig.   2017; NRC, 2012a), new curricular mate-  Science: Washington, D.C., U.S. Global
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          the classroom (Kloser, 2014). Well over   activity (InTeGrate, 2017), a thriving   essential-principles-climate-literacy (last
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          teams three or more times throughout a   Manduca, 2017), and an imperative to   Earth Science Literacy Initiative (ESLI), 2010,
                                                                                  Earth Science Literacy Principles: The Big
          course, and over 80% do so at least once   prepare teachers who can engage students   Ideas and Supporting Concepts of Earth
          (Fig. 2). Although both of the data sets   in the science and engineering practices   Science: Arlington, Virginia, National Science
          examined in this study are self-reported,   and productive discourse (Windschitl and   Foundation, 13 p.
          Teasdale et al. (2017) found a strong cor-  Stroupe, 2017). We can make use of these   Egger, A.E., Bruckner, M.Z., Birnbaum, S.J., and
          relation between self-reports of the fre-  research results and resources to make   Gilbert, L.A., 2019, Facilitating the develop-
          quency of use of in-class exercises and   improvements in our introductory courses   ment of effective interdisciplinary curricular
                                                                                  materials, in Gosselin, D.C., Egger, A.E., and
          observations of student-student interactions,   to better reach all students. Looking to   Taber, J.J., eds., Interdisciplinary Teaching
          group work, and discussion. The classrooms   the future, as students emerge from K–12   about Earth and the Environment for a
          where these behaviors were observed were   systems built on the NGSS, they will   Sustainable Future: Berlin, Springer, https://
          classified as “student-centered,” which con-  enter our classrooms with high expecta-  doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03273-9_3.
          stituted 25% of the total they observed—   tions for using the skills they’ve devel-  Freeman, S., Eddy, S.L., McDonough, M., Smith,
                                                                                  M.K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., and Wender-
          a similar proportion to the proportion of   oped in middle and high school to con-  oth, M.P., 2014, Active learning increases
          instructors who reported using in-class   duct sophisticated analyses, address big   student performance in science, engineering,
          exercises and/or small-group discussion    problems, and make a difference in the   and mathematics: Proceedings of the National
          in every class in 2016 (Fig. 1).   world. We need to be ready for them.  Academy of Sciences of the United States of
            Several pedagogic strategies designed                                 America, v. 111, https://doi.org/10.1073/
                                                                                  pnas.1319030111.
          for the undergraduate classroom support   ACKNOWLEDGMENTS             Gilbert, L.A., Stempien, J., McConnell, D.A.,
          the use of productive discourse, including   Members of the National Geoscience Faculty   Budd, D.A., van der Hoeven Kraft, K.J.,
          lecture tutorials (Kortz et al., 2008), peer   Survey research team provided valuable feedback   Bykerk-Kauffman, A., Jones, M.H., Knight,
          interactions and reflection (Mason and   and support at several stages of this work,   C.C., Matheney, R.K., Perkins, D., and Wirth,
          Singh, 2010), and two-stage (or collabora-  particularly Kim Kastens, Heather Macdonald,   K.R., 2012, Not just “rocks for jocks”: Who
          tive) exams (Gilley and Clarkston, 2014),   Rory McFadden, Karen Viskupic, Becky Lien, and   are introductory geology students and why are
                                                                                  they here?: Journal of Geoscience Education,
                                             Karen McNeal. This work was funded by several
          among many others. Providing students   grants from the National Science Foundation to    v. 60, no. 4, p. 360–371, https://doi.org/
          the opportunity to think and process new   On the Cutting Edge, InTeGrate, and SAGE 2YC.  10.5408/12-287.1.
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