Creating a Community of Practice Around Geoscience Education Research: NAGT-GER

The Journal of Geoscience Education (JGE) has been a valued scholarly dissemination outlet for geoscience education researchers and practitioners for over three decades. This community of scholars has grown in the last decade, as both the number of graduate programs in geoscience education research has increased (see for example, CitationLibarkin, 2014), and as more classically-trained geoscientists expand the scope of their scholarship to share literature-grounded and evidence-based teaching materials and methods with their peers (CitationSt. John et al., 2013). This growth is to be celebrated, as it attests to the value that the geoscience community places on ever-improving our teaching and understanding student learning.

The National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT; http://nagt.org/index.html) is arguably the lead professional organization that supports this community growth - through its publication of JGE and In the Trenches; through professional development programs, including the upcoming Earth Educators Rendezvous (July 13–17 2015, http://serc.carleton.edu/earth_rendezvous/2015/index.html); through scholarship and award programs; and though the recent establishment of Divisions around shared professional interests. I wanted to call your attention to the newly created NAGT Geoscience Education Research (NAGT-GER) Division as readers, reviewers, and authors publishing in JGE. NAGT-GER is the result of the recent expansion of geoscience education research; it is also a potential catalyst for individual advancement, collaborations, and disciplinary evolution by giving organizational structure to the research and scholarship in geoscience education and serving as this field's community of practice.