Earthquakes; what are they and what causes them?

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What do our students really know about geophysics?
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Relationship to our project
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What are earthquakes? What causes them?

• A summary of student conceptions of earthquakes
  and other underpinning topics as informed by 25
  years of research

Michael Hubenthal, Education Specialist
July, 2006 v1.2
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Student Understandings

• Children develop their own non-scientific
  explanations of events, prior to instruction
  (Ault, 1982, 1984, 1994 Piaget, 1929)
• Understanding description and explanation
  (Newton, 2000)

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Challenges to conceptual understanding in the
geosciences
(Piaget, 1929)
(Ault, 1984)
( Blake, 2005)
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What is an EQ? - Young students
(Ross and Shuell, 1991 Sharpe et al., 1995)
(Tsai, 2001)
(Leather, 1987 Sharpe et al., 1995)
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Conceptual shift at age 14?
(Barrow Haskings, 1996 DeLaughter et al.,
1998 Libarkin et al., 2005)
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Possible explanations for conceptual shift
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Others Explanations
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Location of relationship to EQs
Philips, 1991 Schoon, 1992
(Leather, 1987 Shapre et al., 1995)
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Sharpe et al., 1995
Lillo, 1994
DeLaughter et al., 1998 Libarkin et al., 2005
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Tectonic Plates
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What do teachers know?
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Dahl et al., 2005
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Seismology as evidence
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Limits of Current Practice

• What is an Earthquake?
• Descriptive vs. cause definitions
• What causes Earthquakes?
• Elastic nature of rocks
• Relation between seismicity and geologic features
• What is inside Earth?
• How do we know if we have never been?
• Complexity and boundaries
• Patterns and frequency of seismicity
• Intraplate vs edge fo plate earthquakes
• Plates and their boundaries (vertical and
  horizontal)
• How we know what we know

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?
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Implications

• A disconnect between students response about the
  causes of earthquakes actual understanding
• Previous research of childrens understanding of
  science concepts shows
• express scientifically acceptable statements
  while maintaining misconceptions
• recite correct concept definitions with out any
  understanding
• Students themselves may be aware of this
  disconnect Barrow and Haskins (1996) found that
  73 of undergraduates surveyed in a Geology 101
  level course, who had not experienced an
  earthquake felt that they had a limited or low
  understanding of earthquakes.

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Discussion

• Conceptual shift at age 14 on to adulthood to a
  more scientific response to What is an
  earthquake?
• Responses contain references to plate tectonics
  but often also contained erroneous or
  contradictory information
• Therefore
• Existing research has done little to probe the
  depth of student understanding beyond the
  scientifically accurate terminology in their
  responses

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Objectives

• Provide you with the best information possible
  about what your students probably know
• Examine what students know across a range of ages
  to assess the impact of current methods of
  instruction.

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