Building an Understanding of Geological Time: A Cognitive Synthesis of the "Macro" and "Micro" Scales of Time

Few discoveries in geology are more important than geological time. However, for most people it is impossible to grasp because of its massive scale. In this chapter we offer a solution to this problem based on our research in cognition and education. Our strategy involves the decoupling of geological time between the macro-scale of "deep time which includes the major features of earth history, and whose research we call event-based studies, and the micro-scale of relative time represented by strata, whose research we term logicbased studies. Our event-based study focuses on the problem of learning about macroevolution within the massive time scale of the fossil record. We approached this problem by creating a four-stage learning model in which the students manipulate a series of increasingly complex visual representations of evolution in time. Post program results indicate that students had a better understanding of macroevolution as seen in the fossil record; moreover, they appreciated that different events in absolute time required different scales of time to occur. Our logic-based studies used Montagnero’s diachronic thinking model as a basis for describing how students reconstruct geological systems in time. Using this model, we designed three specialized instruments to test a sample of middle and high school students. Our findings indicated that there were significant differences between grade 9–12 and grade 7–8 students in their ability to reconstruct geological systems. Moreover, grade 11-12 geology majors in Israel had a significant advantage over their non-geological counterparts in such reconstruction tasks.