Steven Semken

 

Research


My scholarly interests are in the situated (place-based, immersive, culturally integrated) teaching and learning of the Earth and space sciences (ESS); in ethnogeology, the study of the ways that diverse human communities and cultures interpret Earth systems; and in the regional geology of the Greater Southwest.

Here at ASU my students and I work not only with SESE faculty, but also with colleagues in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education (MLFCoE), School of Human Evolution & Social Change (SHESC), and Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, & Technology (CRESMET) at ASU.
           
Our research group is motivated by four issues that are local, national, and synergistic:

Our work is largely situated in the Greater Southwest, but its outcomes can be applied anywhere.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

The sense of place and place-based science teaching and learning. 
We teach Earth sciences in and about places: localities given meaning by human experience.  Places often hold personal or cultural meanings for students that can either enhance or hinder their learning of science.  Place-based (PB) science teaching immerses students in local environments and presents science in the context of local place meanings.  PB teaching has been advocated for relevance to some underrepresented groups (e.g., American Indians and Chicanos in the southwest USA), for engaging students with nature, and for promoting environmental and cultural sustainability.  However, most research on its effectiveness has been limited to indirect measures such as performance on standardized tests. 

Graduate students Carol Butler Freeman, Tracy Perkins, Deborah Williams, and I are addressing this need by developing a firm theoretical foundation for PB pedagogy and assessment based on the sense of place, a construct that encapsulates human connections to places.  Sense of place is richly characterized in environmental psychology, but has not been well understood by educators.  We have introduced this construct to science education research as a useful tool for PB curriculum development and authentic assessment.

(a) Sense of place as a learning outcome and assessment measure in PB science teaching.  We adapted psychometric surveys from the environmental-psychology and geography literature to measure gains in student senses of place as an authentic learning outcome of PB teaching, and to characterize and compare senses of local places in different student groups (by ethnicity, habitation, outdoor experiences, etc.). We show the feasibility and value of engaging the sense of place as a learning outcome and authentic assessment measure for PB teaching.

Recent Publications

Semken, S., & Butler Freeman, C. (2008). Sense of place in the practice and assessment of place-based science teaching. Science Education, 92(6), 1042-1057.

Semken, S., & Butler Freeman, C. L. (2007). Cognitive and affective outcomes of a Southwest place-based approach to teaching introductory geoscience. Proceedings of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Semken, S. (2005). Sense of place and place-based introductory geoscience teaching for American Indian and Alaska Native undergraduates. Journal of Geoscience Education, 53, 149-157.

Our near-term goal is to develop and validate new quantitative sense-of-place instruments that are more specific to educational contexts, and which can be tailored for maximum relevance to particular places and regions.  Such survey construction requires a rich database of place meanings and attachments that can only be had by means of qualitative research methods; hence our parallel activity in:

(b) Qualitative characterization of senses of place.  Our group, in collaboration with SHESC anthropologist Betsy Brandt, is compiling and coding senses of place in communities in and beyond the university.  Our current focus is on the inhabitants of the copper-mining region of central Arizona, which is geologically, ecologically, culturally, and historically very diverse.  This homeland of the Yavapai and Apache people (who are still present) now has a large Hispanic/Latino population.  The regional economy follows mining booms and busts but is increasingly influenced by the encroachment of metropolitan Phoenix.  This is a microcosm of the urbanizing interior West.  Most schools are minority-majority and high-need, typical of those we hypothesize would be fertile ground for PB teaching.  Here we are documenting individual and community senses of the coincident natural and cultural landscapes.  Our studies encompass archival research, semi-structured interviews, and field studies assisted by Tribal and Federal professionals.  We also train local teachers, students, and other community members to document meaningful places with the Photovoice ethnographic method.  The immediate outcomes of this work are coded place meanings that inform and enhance my ongoing PB science teacher enhancement work in the region (discussed below). The findings will also inform sense-of-place survey construction.  In conducting this research, we typically become involved in the communities we study.

(c) Other situated teaching methods (e.g., field-based).

Recent and Selected Publications

Butler Freeman, C. L., Semken, S., Lawson, A., Oehrtman, M., Schaufele, C., & Jensen, J. (2007). How old is the Earth: an exploration of geologic time through place-based inquiry. Proceedings of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Gonzales, D., & Semken, S. (2006). Integrating undergraduate education and scientific discovery through field research in igneous petrology. Journal of Geoscience Education, 54, 133-142.

Dubiel, R. F., Hasiotis, S. T., & Semken, S. C. (1997). Hands-on geology for Navajo Nation teachers. Journal of Geoscience Education, 45, 113-116.

 

Ethnogeology. 
For two decades I have beem a pioneer in the study and characterization of geologic concepts from Indigenous knowledge systems, primarily for the purpose of enhancing geoscience education for American Indian students and informing PB curricula rooted in Indian country While continuing my earlier work on Diné (Navajo) ethnogeology, I am now investigating Yavapai, Apache, and Hispanic minero cultures from the copper-mining region in collaboration with E. Brandt and her many contacts in these communities.  Our work is careful and deliberate in order to protect culturally sensitive knowledge.

Recent and Selected Publications

Semken, S., Fouch, M., Garnero, E., Zah, P., & Lippert, D. (2007). Meshing American Indian concerns with goals of EarthScope's USArray. Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 88(31), 309-310.

Blackhorse, A., Semken, S., & Charley, P. (2003). A Navajo-English thesaurus of geological terms. In S. G. Lucas, S. C. Semken, W. R. Berglof, & D. S. Ulmer-Scholle (Eds.), Geology of the Zuni Plateau: Guidebook 54 (pp. 103-108). Socorro, NM: New Mexico Geological Society.

Riggs, E. M., & Semken, S. C. (2001). Culture and science: Earth science for Native Americans. Geotimes, 46, 14-17.

Semken, S. C., & Morgan, F. (1997). Navajo pedagogy and Earth systems. Journal of Geoscience Education, 45, 109-112.

Semken, S. C. (1997). NAGT/GSA symposium on geoscience education in Native American communities. Journal of Geoscience Education, 45, 104-105.

 

Informal geoscience education in southwestern National Parks. 
This is enjoying increasing attention, possibly in response to societal concerns over global change and natural hazards.  However, the vast potential of interpretative exhibits and programs in popular Parks to build geoscientific literacy and environmental awareness is still largely unrealized.  This motivates our ongoing work at two geologically rich National Parks in the southwestern United States:

(a) Visitor conceptions and meaning-making at Petrified Forest National Park.  This is a well-known locality for Triassic fossil flora and modern badlands, but as is typical of National Parks, its exhibits were not designed to address visitor misconceptions about geologic time, change, and landscapes.  With full cooperation of Park staff, my MS student Nievita Bueno Watts conducted a detailed qualitative analysis of visitor geologic conceptions and meaning-making from data collected on site, using Chi’s verbal analysis methodology to characterize specific ways that visitors make meaning from what they observe.  From these findings we recommend designs for exhibits and activities to directly address prior conceptions.  We continue to work with Park staff to implement these recommendations and to adapt our findings to the Park’s program for training interpretative Rangers.  This will also involve the EarthScope Education & Outreach program; as a USArray seismic station is sited at this Park.

Recent Publication

Bueno Watts, N. F., Semken, S., Pineda, M., & Alvarado, C. (2008). Visitors’ geological conceptions and meaning making at Petrified Forest National Park. Proceedings of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Baltimore, Maryland.

(b) The Trail of Time at Grand Canyon National Park.  We are partners in a collaboration also including University of New Mexico (Karl Karlstrom and colleagues), University of Massachusetts, the National Park Service, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the private sector to design and built the world’s largest interpretative geoscience exhibit at Grand Canyon.  This Trail of Time will enable visitors to construct an accurate understanding of and visceral feeling for geologic time and Earth history by traversing a 2-km timeline trail along the South Rim, marked at 1 meter per million years.  It also provides a superb laboratory for experiments in visitor cognition of time, scale, change, and geology. 

Our project team (including grad student Emily Habinck, undergraduate students Monica Pineda and Jennifer McNeil; and colleagues Jeff Dodick of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Kip Ault of Lewis and Clark College) is conducting off-site and Canyon-based experiments on the effectiveness of linear timelines as analogical models for teaching about deep time.  We have shown how visitors can negotiate changing time scales needed to bring their frames of reference from human time to geologic time, and have informed the design of the physical Trail.  Permanent time markers are now being installed along the South Rim, and we are beginning on-site studies of how effectively the linear Trail of Time will impart a sense of the stratigraphic time encoded vertically in the rock layers exposed in Grand Canyon.

Recent Publication

Karlstrom, K., Semken, S., Crossey, L., Perry, D., Gyllenhaal, E. D., Dodick, J., Williams, M., Hellmich-Bryan, J., Crow, R., Bueno Watts, N., & Ault, C. (in press, September). Informal geoscience education on a grand scale: the Trail of Time exhibition at Grand Canyon. Journal of Geoscience Education.

 

Mesozoic and Cenozoic volcanism and regional tectonics in the Greater Southwest. 
Regional geoscientific research complements and enhances studies of Southwest places and place-based pedagogy.  I collaborated as a geologist on the La RISTRA seismic transect project that yielded a clear picture of Rio Grande Rift evolution and Colorado Plateau structure, and on EarthScope studies in Arizona.  I have studied the petrology and hydrovolcanic activity in the Tertiary Navajo volcanic field ever since I taught in its vicinity. Recent work by our PhD graduate Brittany Brand led us to publish significant new ideas on maar-diatreme volcanism.

Recent and Selected Publications

Semken, S. (in press). Ship Rock and the Navajo volcanic field.  In L. G. Price (Ed.), The parks, monuments, and public lands of New Mexico: Geology and landscape: Vol. 1. Northern New Mexico. Socorro, NM: New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources.

Brand, B. D., Clarke, A. B., & Semken, S. (2008). Eruptive dynamics and depositional processes of Narbona Pass maar volcano, Navajo volcanic field, Navajo Nation, New Mexico (USA). Bulletin of Volcanology, DOI: 10.1007/s00445-008-0209-y.

Wilson, D., Aster, R., West, M., Ni, J., Grand, S., Gao, W., Baldridge, W. S., Semken, S., & Patel, P. (2005). Lithospheric structure of the Río Grande Rift. Nature, 433, 851-855.

Semken, S. (2003). Black rocks protruding up: the Navajo volcanic field. In S. G. Lucas, S. C. Semken, W. R. Berglof, & D. S. Ulmer-Scholle (Eds.), Geology of the Zuni Plateau: Guidebook 54 (pp. 133-138). Socorro, NM: New Mexico Geological Society.

Lucas, S. G., Semken, S. C., Berglof, W. R., & Ulmer-Scholle, D. S. (Eds.). (2003). Geology of the Zuni Plateau: Guidebook 54. Socorro, NM: New Mexico Geological Society.

Tsosie, B., Semken, S., & Harrison, B. (1997). The Shiprock uranium-mill tailings remedial action (UMTRA) site. In O. J. Anderson, B. S. Kues, & S. G. Lucas (Eds.), Mesozoic Geology and Paleontology of the Four Corners Region: Guidebook 48 (pp. 279-281).  Socorro, NM: New Mexico Geological Society.

Semken, S. C., & McIntosh, W. C. (1997). 40Ar/39Ar age determinations for the Carrizo Mountains laccolith, Navajo Nation, Arizona. In O. J. Anderson, B. S. Kues, & S. G. Lucas (Eds.), Mesozoic Geology and Paleontology of the Four Corners Region: Guidebook 48 (pp. 75-80).  Socorro, NM: New Mexico Geological Society.

 

School of Earth and Space Exploration
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences