Developing community disaster resilience through collaborative professional development: Integrating teachers, informal educators, and emergency management personnel

Because geologic hazards affect large regions, overwhelming the capacity of dedicated emergency response resources, community resilience depends on individual and collective preparedness that is in place prior to an event. Two projects providing professional development on earthquake and tsunami science and preparedness, and utilizing an innovative “pedagogical exchange” model, demonstrated improvement in community resilience in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The projects conducted immersive 4-day educator workshops that combined K-12 teachers with informal and emergency management educators to co-learn about hazards and collaborate on community action projects presented at a Share-a-Thon event 6-9 months after the workshop. The Cascadia EarthScope Earthquake and Tsunami Education Program and EarthScope Alaska Native Geoscience Learning Experience hosted a total of nine educator workshops in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Project strategies focused on developing participants’ individual knowledge of hazards and preparedness and their ability to act collectively. Design elements include embedded hands-on learning activities during science content sessions, field experiences featuring regional hazards, team action-planning, and ongoing mentorship by leaders and emergency managers. Results show that both projects were effective at increasing participant content knowledge, self-efficacy for teaching about hazards and preparedness, and optimism for preparing at the community level. The professional development model presented here is demonstrated to be an effective way to improve emergency preparedness at individual, organization, and community scales. We recommend further testing of the pedagogical exchange model to assess its scalability and transferability to other regions and types of hazards.