The Trend of the Researches in the Field of 'Earth Science' Education in the United States

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to make clear the trend of educational studies especially in relation to "earth science". The data analyzed in the present study are bibliographical data from Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE). The educational research paper in 'earth science' is defined as the study which has at least one of the following 9 keywords: "earth science", "geology", "geophysics", "meteorology", "oceanography", "seismology", "soil science", "physical geography", "paleontology". This is because the other 8 terms in the list are narrower definition of "earth science" in ERIC's thesaurus. CIJE has data from 1969 to the present, and 1644 literature which had been published from 1969 to 1984 were taken in this study. The number of papers in 'earth science' was significantly greated for the year from 1977 to 1980 than for the other years taken in this study. Next the co-appeared keywords in those literature were analyzed by factor analysis and cluster analysis. The results of two analyses show that the total of 16 years is divided into three periods; 1969-1972, 1973-1980, 1981-1984. Lastly by using the factorscores of each keyword, the causes of the two factors, "new" "old", were specified. And to specify the essential keywords which caused the changes between first period and second period and between second and third, chi-square values were examined.