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Disputation: Rie Hjørnegaard Malm

Doctoral candidate Rie Hjørnegaard Malm at the Department of Geosciences, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, is defending the thesis What is fieldwork for? Exploring Roles of Fieldwork in Higher Education Earth Science for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor.

Rie Hjørnegaard Malm. Photo: Private

Rie Hjørnegaard Malm. Photo: Private

The PhD defence and trial lecture are fully digital and streamed using Zoom. The host of the session will moderate the technicalities while the chair of the defence will moderate the disputation.

Trial lecture

Earth System Science in Geoscience Education: Contemporary impact and critical considerations

Conferral summary (In Norwegian)

Feltarbeid er en viktig undervisningsform innen geofag. Denne avhandlingen utforsker og utvider vår forståelse av den rollen det geologiske feltarbeidet spiller i  høyere utdanning. Dette oppnås ved å se kritisk på feltarbeid og utforske studentenes læring og identitetsforhandlinger i møtet med utdannelsen.

Main research findings

Popular scientific article about Malm’s dissertation:

What is fieldwork for? Exploring Roles of Fieldwork in Higher Education Earth Science

This thesis asks: What is fieldwork for? and aims at opening for explorations of a well-established element in Earth Science education: fieldwork. The thesis provides insights into fieldwork practices and how these practices influence students’ senses of belonging and their negotiations of geoscience identities. The use of identity as a lens to explore the specific practice of fieldwork makes it possible to illuminate structures and ideas attached to this practice and how this influence students identity negotiations. The work illustrates how the social practice of fieldwork reveals taken-for-granted ideas about students’ engagement in and perception of fieldwork and their possibilities for learning and becoming Earth Scientists.

Students’ engagement in fieldwork practices were delved into though observations of teaching in the field and students’ independent work in the field. How these experiences shaped the students’ senses of belonging and negotiations of identity was explored though interviews with individual students. This enables investigations of fieldwork practices that go beyond seeing fieldwork as only an inherently ‘good’ teaching method but also as a practice with norms and values of disciplinary culture, as well as tacit knowledge. Furthermore, the work shows how disciplinary practices are negotiated and contested by students on their way to become Earth Scientists, which illuminates barriers for learning and participation in Earth Science.

First-year students during their first field experience at Finse in Central Norway. Photo: Rie Hjørnegaard Malm
First-year geosciences students during their first field experience at Finse in Central Norway. Photo: Rie Hjørnegaard Malm

With this, the thesis generates nuances of how fieldwork practices can be perceived by students in Higher Education Earth Science. This will hopefully inspire the Earth Science community to reflect on how to plan, conduct and discuss fieldwork in Higher Education Earth Science in the future.

Photo and other information:

Press photo: Rie Hjørnegaard Malm, portrait; 700px. Photo: Private

Other photo material: Photo with description and credit as specified in the article above, size 700px.

Published Jan. 14, 2021 12:39 PM - Last modified Sep. 27, 2023 1:42 PM