How Long Has It Taken for the Physical Landscape to Form? Conceptions of Spanish Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

This paper analyses the conceptions of a group of students about geological time and its relation to physical landscape formation, focusing on the frequency and rate of a number of geological processes that have shaped our planet over time and that are involved in the formation of the current relief. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire that was administered to 199 university students from a Spanish public university. A total of 185 of them were pre-service teachers and 14 were geology students. Results demonstrated that pre-service teachers had trouble correctly answering questions about the current relief, but especially those questions related to landscapes throughout the history of Earth. Data analysis was done, taking into account pre-university students’ tuition, and results showed that those who had taken a high school branch of sciences and technology obtained better results than those who had taken a humanities and social sciences branch. These latter also obtained better results than those who had taken arts as a high school branch. Furthermore, pre-service teachers had difficulties mastering mid-time magnitudes, which ended up making it difficult for them to understand how the physical landscapes were formed. Finally, from the obtained results, some curricula implications are discussed.

Keywords

• university students
• pre-service teachers
• geosciences
• geography
• deep time
• geologic time