Virtual field environments (VFEs) based on actual field sites are being used in professional development programs to familiarize teachers with field sites and give them the opportunity to practice investigative fieldwork, thus helping them make better use of limited field time. In other cases, the construction of VFEs provides a catalyst for actual fieldwork, and teacher workshop participants author VFEs that they can use with their own students. Virtual fieldwork development also improves technological skills relevant for the teaching of Earth system science. This article looks at what VFEs are, some of the practical and pedagogical issues involved in their design, and how they are used in teacher professional development to support and encourage field education.

Expert geoscientists think in terms of systems that involve multiple processes with complex interactions. Earth system science has become increasingly important at the professional level, and an understanding of systems is a key learning goal at all levels of the earth science curriculum. In this paper, research in the cognitive and learning sciences is brought to bear on the question of how students learn systems thinking and on the challenges of developing effective instructional programs. The research suggests that learning systems concepts is difficult and that it involves extended learning progressions, requiring structured curricular integration across levels of K–16 instruction. Following a discussion of these challenges, current instructional innovations are outlined, and an agenda for needed research on learning and teaching systems thinking is proposed.

Knowledge integration involves pulling together ideas and information into a coherent framework such that new ideas can be linked into already established ideas, and groups of ideas can be mobilized for solving problems, answering questions, or understanding observations. Geoscientists are called on to integrate information from many different modes of inquiry, across different cultural and scientific traditions, in the face of incomplete evidence and in support of ill-structured problems. This paper explores five strategies to foster knowledge integration through geoscience education: three organizational schemas for content, plus two integrative practices. These are (1) integrate around a locale of significance to students, (2) integrate around a societally important problem, (3) integrate around a suite of “big ideas,” (4) integrate using visual representations, and (5) integrate using physical and computer models. For each strategy, we describe examples of its use in geoscience education, critique advantages and potential disadvantages, and suggest questions for future research. We conclude with a thought experiment envisioning the nodes and linkages in hypothetical mental concept maps of students educated with each of these five strategies, seeking to improve on a fragmented mental map of isolated nodes and weak linkages.