Can the Field School Be Improved? Lessons Learned through Education Research of an NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For many undergraduate anthropology majors, participation in an archaeological field school is the entry point to a professional career in the discipline. Despite the importance of field schools, few scholars have investigated the learning outcomes students gain or lasting impacts, either negative or positive, from participation in field-based research. We report on the educational design, learning objectives, and results of two years of formative and summative assessments for an interdisciplinary, archaeology and ecology, research program. Our learning objectives include promoting scientific literacy and communication, critical thinking and STEM skills, and capacities in archaeological and ecological interdisciplinarity. Using developed rubrics that account for both critical thinking and STEM understanding, self-administered competency surveys, and items from the National Assessment of Education Progress and the American Association for Advancement of Science, we found significant gains in nearly all identified learning objectives. Students had growth in program specific content, STEM skills and discipline specific skills, STEM critical thinking skills, and scientific communication skills. We hope to expand upon these quantitative assessments to develop future qualitative research on student field school experiences.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23612