Tunnicliffe, SD; (2017) Overcoming 'Earth Science Blindness': Earth Science in Action in Natural History Dioramas. In: Costa, MFPCM and Dorrío, BVJ, (eds.) Hands-on Science: Growing with Science. (pp. pp. 1-4). The Hands-on Science Network (HSCI)

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Abstract

Children are born into this world into a place and environment, and immediately start developing a personal ‘sense of place’. Through their gradual awareness of the immediate environment their knowledge and sense of this place extends. In the beginning, the ‘place’ is dependent on the earth science of our planet as has created the original environment in the area which is the child’s place, real or conceptual. Increasingly the deleterious effect on the environment, where own species has destroyed or otherwise changed the landscape, our place, has led to our era in our world being named the Anthropogenic [1].There is an imperative need in this time for we humans to understand how to interact with their surroundings evolved over time and became instinctive, people knew the seasons of the year, the changes in daylight hours, they understood cloud patterns and much more. Scientific Literacy, in terms of the understanding basic scientific processes and information, has become important for preserving what we have for our future. Earth Science is as vital a subject today as it was necessary for survival in the past. The soil and the sky are two naturally occurring phenomena all around us, thus are part of a child’s world, which they notice. I have coined the phrase ‘earth science blindness”, an extension of the phrase first proposed by Wandersee and Schussler [2]. Children have ‘earth science experiences’ when young but people possess an apparent ‘, earth science blindness’ not noticing the environment which is determined by earth science. Earth science is the key to understanding our world and the living components, which create habitats, influenced by the substrate and the climate and thus inhabitants Biogeography depends on the Earth science phenomena. These factors are represented in natural history dioramas. The recorded spontaneous conversations of visitors in natural history museums at dioramas reveal that few comments are made about earth science as well as other features and objects in natural history dioramas. Visitors focus on identifying the specimens and commenting on the attributes of the animals. The earth science elements, the substrate, the meteorology depicted and the flora and fauna which are all depended to the earth are largely ignored We suggest strategies to focus attention on earth science in these exhibits.

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