Christopher King

Biography

Chris King was awarded a Geology degree from Bristol University before becoming a diamond prospector for De Beers over five years, in South Africa, Swaziland and Australia. He was lucky enough to find a diamond mine during this time. After leaving De Beers, he was awarded a distinction in an MSc in ‘Sedimentology’ by Reading University before undertaking teacher training in science and geology education at Keele University.

On leaving Keele, Chris was appointed as a geology teacher at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, where he worked for 19 years becoming Head of lower school Science and School Development Officer. In 1996 he was appointed by Keele University as the Earth science/geology specialist on the science teacher training team. Since then he has been Science Team Leader on more than one occasion and has served as Head of the Department of Education for two years.

In 1993 Chris was involved in the organisation of the first International Conference in Geoscience Education. Later, he was also involved in the development of the International Geoscience Organisation (IGEO), and became its first Chair in 2000. The IGEO has since run a series of very successful international geoscience education conferences. He is currently a Council member of IGEO and Vice-Chair of the International Union of Geological Sciences Commission on Geoscience Education (IUGS-COGE).

Chris is Director of the Earth Science Education Unit (ESEU), based at Keele which, over the past 15 years, has presented CPD workshops though a national facilitator network to more than 30,000 teachers across the UK. Feedback has been excellent and ESEU research has demonstrated chances in teaching as a result of ESEU professional development with the potential to improve the Earth science education of millions of pupils.

For many years Chris has been involved in the Earth Science Teachers’ Association (ESTA)(past-Chair, currently Chair of the Secondary Committee) and the Earth Science Education Forum (current Chair).

He has co-written an A-level Geology textbook (for 16-18 year olds) (1999) and more recently a GCSE Geology textbook (for 14-16 year olds) that is freely downloadable from the internet (2010), whilst contributing to a range of other science textbooks and resources. He has more than 200 publications overall, with over 30 of these in peer-reviewed journals. He is referee for several international journals.

He co-edited ESTA’s ‘Science of the Earth’ series. Many of the ideas contained therein have since been developed into Earthlearningideas, published on the Earthlearningidea website that he instigated in 2007. More than 200 activities have been published, primarily for use in the developing world, but widely used in the developed world as well; they have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Norwegian, Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, Polish and Catalan. The freely downloadable activities are currently published at the rate of every two weeks.

Chris has made presentations and conducted workshops at many international conferences and venues across the world.

In 2003 he was awarded the Geological Society’s ‘Distinguished Service Award’ and the Geologists’ Association’s ‘Halstead Medal’ in 2011, for ‘work of outstanding merit, deemed to further the objects of the Association and to promote Geology'.

He became Professor of Earth Science Education at Keele University in 2006. Chris retired from Keele in December 2015.

Research and scholarship

My research interests include:

• the effectiveness of Earth science teaching in the UK.
• the development of Earth science teaching.
• monitoring a national programme of Earth science INSET.
• misconceptions in Earth science understanding.
• the international development of Earth science teaching

Meanwhile, my editorial work includes:

• Reviewer for the International Journal of Science Education
• Reviewer for the Journal of Science Education and Technology
• Reviewer for Computers in Education
• Associate Editor of the Journal of Geoscience Education.
• Editorial Associate of the Association for Science Education (ASE) Journal, School Science Review.