This award will support a 2-day workshop for 40 participants to catalyze relationships between early career disciplinary researchers in the earth, atmospheric, ocean, and polar sciences and discipline-based education researchers (DBERs) in the geosciences. These relationships are critical for two reasons: (1) to address the foundational research needed on how people learn geoscience content and develop into expert geoscientists and (2) to facilitate early career geoscientists in enhancing the broader impacts of their research. The workshop will be convened to grow mutually beneficial research collaborations amongst early career investigators that will build upon the extant literature. This workshop will promote networking amongst geoscience investigators and DBERs to broaden perspectives, develop connections, and nurture a community of future leaders for the geoscience community. The participants at this workshop will establish professional relationships that are likely to inform research and educational practices for the community at large. Moreover, it is expected that through these interactions the teaching practices of both groups would be better informed and training of future geoscientists will be well informed by research results. The workshop will take place in the Washington DC area in August 2014.
