Advancing Atmospheric Science Education: a View of the Broader Landscape and Potential Directions and Approaches

Examining and advancing our understanding of atmospheric science education is a motivation for many in the community including most presenters in the AMS Symposium on Education. This presentation will provide a brief history of education and research efforts of our community and provide recommendations of how to move the work in atmospheric sciences education forward both within our community and within the broader geoscience community. Particular focus will be placed on educational research as an avenue of development and dissemination.

From the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) to Discipline Based Education Research (DBER) there are many opportunities for the atmospheric sciences community to become more engaged in formalizing the work and research done in understanding how students, and others, best learn about the atmosphere. These activities typically fall outside the realm of experience and expertise of our core community members. Thus, with many opportunities for engagement in these activities, there are also many barriers. Barriers range from awareness of opportunities and existing literature on atmospheric science education and learning sciences, to how to partner with people who have these areas of expertise. Information will be presented on (1) the broader landscape of work that has been done in our field, (2) opportunities available to advance our understanding of atmospheric sciences teaching and learning as well as (3) opportunities all community members can engage in to more rigorously examine the impacts of education efforts on learning and teaching.