Understanding How Students and Experts Reason About Atmospheric Processes During a Convective Field Study

Our research seeks to 1) build theory on how meteorologists reason about complex atmospheric phenomena; 2) understand how experts transfer that reasoning to students; and 3) connect current education practice with research backed evidence of how students think and learn in authentic contexts. To collect preliminary data during the initial stages of the project, we embedded one education researcher in an 11-day convective field study conducted by Valparaiso University (MET385) held in May 2024. She worked with 17 students who had varying levels of expertise and two instructors who led the study and organized the students into pairs. These pairs consisted of junior and senior student partners and facilitated an apprenticeship-like dynamic that scaffolded the learning of the junior partner. From this experience we collected many hours of observational and interview data, sketches, impromptu lessons, and nowcast forecasting. In this presentation, we will share initial data results and early observations that will potentially lead to insights about how students and experts conceptualize the atmosphere and complex fluid behavior. For example, we solicited sketches of “outflow” after the group experienced storm outflow in several tangible ways and are analyzing student and expert sketches of “outflow” to better understand their mental models. How these mental models evolve and what learning takes place (and in what contexts) is key to advancing our understanding of how students think about atmospheric processes. We additionally solicited student and expert conceptions of the atmosphere as a fluid and observed differences in responses, especially with students who used solid object analogies to describe the atmosphere. Such analogies with solid objects could potentially lead to misconceptions as they involve impermeable boundaries between objects and surrounding space. We plan more extensive data collection during future convective field studies and seek input from the community on how this research might best target student understanding of complex atmospheric processes and effectively inform practice.